Gardner’s work goes beyond cognitive skills and outcomes. In fact, only two of the intelligences, linguistic and logical-mathematical, can be considered cognitive in nature. I find his work an affirmation of the Anishnawbe Life Road Teachings that we all have “gifts” that we need to recognize and nurture.

I admire the work of Daniel Goleman who postulates that a person’s academic and technical skills only provide them with a foot in the door – at school and at work. What makes the difference once they are in is their “emotional intelligence” – which includes factors such as self-awareness, self-discipline, and empathy.

In fact, Knowledge Matters, a federal discussion paper that may shape the way the government works with the field on literacy, suggests in Section 3, Strengthening Accessibility and Excellence in Post- Secondary Education, that, “Teamwork is an essential part of the production process, and interpersonal skills are becoming key determinants of business success.”

In addition, the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey will measure Teamwork indirectly. In the first section, “About the Survey,” Teamwork is rationalized as:

the importance of interpersonal skills such as those required by teamwork in both work and everyday life ... [those] who wish to participate fully in community and professional life, increasingly must possess the skills necessary to work in teams.

In other words, many people are discovering what Aboriginal Peoples have been saying for a long time. There is more to life than the acquisition of cognitive outcomes.

National Buy-In
Two years later, in 1998, I was offered yet another contract. Beverly Sabourin and Associates asked me to help them compile a directory of Aboriginal literacy programs across Canada. These programs had to be Aboriginal-controlled, so they do not include programs that run out of community colleges or school boards. A team of us interviewed practitioners, mostly on-site. A common denominator in our interviews was the fact that practitioners felt isolated, and that they would like to have a national conference so as to meet and discuss with others of like mind.