Howard Rheingold

Howard Rheingold

I grew up in Public Elementary School in Phoenix, Arizona in the 1950s. I was really smart and really bored. [As a result], I got into trouble and they didn’t know what to do with me. If you were trouble at my school, they send you to the art room. Fortunately [for me], the art teacher was Mrs. Rheingold, my mother.  She was quite well known for being the exact opposite of the button-down, traditional teacher. Her philosophy was that we’re all creative and that expressing ourselves artistically is a human need that everyone has. But people get shut down very early. As a teacher and as my mother, she very strongly defended my right to color outside the lines.
Howard Rheingold, a critic, writer and visiting lecturer at Stanford University on who gave him confidence to ask provocative questions throughout his lifetime.