It may, on the other hand, have the harmful effect of reducing the sense of urgency needed to ensure that all children master basic skills. Many schools will not need much encouragement in this regard. Gardner believes strongly that we are living at the tail end of an exhausted paradigm of human nature.
Gardner believes that the walls of the I. What MI theory says is that we are the animal that exhibits the eight and a half intelligences. It is quite true that the universalization of the computer will automate much of the brute work of logic; but the proliferation of spreadsheets will probably have the effect of making spreadsheet-type thinking more conventional, not less so.
At the same time, we no longer view rationality as the sine qua non of modernity. We have been forcibly disabused of the wisdom of such wise men, and of their machines. So Gardner is quite right to say that the sense of human personality has changed. We grow more estranged from rationality as ever more rationality is demanded of us. Will we turn instead to a more diverse, less hierarchical view of human gifts?
We may, in effect, come to think of well-roundedness as itself the supreme expression of merit. We would also, presumably, be more self-knowing, more socially adroit, more aware of our bodies. But we would also, necessarily, be less something—a little less intellectually nimble, perhaps. Gardner likes to poke fun at what he calls the Alan Dershowitz model of intelligence.
In his provocative statement, James Traub wears a number of hats cultural critic, science reporter, capsule biographer and assumes a number of tones respectful, neutral, ironic.
Rather than responding to each, I have chosen to clarify some points for both Traub and the readers. Traub suggests that all theories of intelligence begin in science and end in cultural politics. It may be true that, in our culture, theories of intelligence are drawn upon to undergird social recommendations e. But one must draw a sharp distinction between those who encourage blurring of boundaries and those who strive to keep the realms discrete.
For example, Arthur Jensen and Hans Eysenck are both psychologists who believe in the explanatory power of G. Throughout his career, Eysenck moved almost too effortlessly between psychometrics and policy; but after one disastrous foray, Jensen has focused on G, avoiding policy debates altogether. As an educational reformer and a citizen, I have described the schools I favor and the society I cherish. But I have sought to keep my scholarly analysis of intelligence separate from my policy recommendations.
And I have always emphasized that the various intelligences are amoral in themselves: one can use interpersonal intelligence to resolve a dispute or to manipulate groups. A domain or discipline is a culturally recognized area of performance, whose practitioners can be arrayed in terms of expertise. Thus spatial intelligence can be exploited in domains like chess playing, sailing, surgery; and the domain of law draws, variously, on linguistic, logical-mathematical, and interpersonal intelligences.
This conceptual distinction is important. Ultimately, as educators or citizens, we should not care which intelligences individuals are using; the important goal is to achieve reasonable performances in domains that matter. An individual with modest logical-mathematical intelligence can still learn to carry out mathematical operations; he will have to rely more than others do on linguistic, spatial, and perhaps bodily intelligences.
MI theory simply provides a convenient way of analyzing how best to approach a domain when customary teaching practices fail. You are reading these words linguistic but you may be representing them mentally using various intelligences ranging from an interpersonal debate between the journalist and the academic, to a numerical scorecard, to a spatial layout of arguments. An MI classroom in the United States may publicly evoke different intelligences in teaching about photosynthesis; but for all we know, students in France or Taiwan may also be encoding such biological systems in a spatial or naturalist way.
Nor should we assume that other societies ignore individual differences. Early education in Japan focuses on social and personal development, and many Japanese families use individual or group tutoring to supplement schooling. In various writings, Traub has suggested that I am opposed to logic and rationality. This is simply untrue. I try to operate according to those canons and hope others will as well. Fortunately, recognizing that standardized tests predict but a modest proportion of future success, some selective institutions welcome other samples of student work.
Two other points. First of all, it takes various gifts and mixes of talents to have a productive society. Second, the kinds of abilities at a premium in a society can change, sometimes quite swiftly. Inventions like the printing press, the computer, or the cinema bring certain intelligences to the fore, while at least temporarily de-emphasizing others. The smarter that machines become, in the Binet sense, the more emphasis society is likely to place on those intelligences that transcend standard computation.
And so, just as evolution is friendly to diversity, we are well advised not to put too much stock in the nurturance of one or two intelligences. Traub imposes on me a dichotomy that I do not make and will not accept. Of course, it is not possible to understand a topic unless you have considerable knowledge, including factual. Who could maintain otherwise? The distinction that I make, most recently in The Disciplined Mind , is twofold.
First and foremost, I believe that facts ought to be picked up through intensive, deep study of consequential issues. Not only will one have the motivation to learn the facts; one will also be in a position to put them together in meaningful ways, to recall them, and to master vital disciplinary ways of thinking. While I have broad sympathy with the progressive tradition in education of philosopher John Dewey , I would be happy to chuck the distinction between Progressive and Traditionalist.
Creativity should not be contrasted to science or logic. There are creative scientists and logicians, and all too many noncreative artists. I do not. Relative autonomy does not, after all, preclude correlation. What happens when we apply his thinking to the world around us? What does it mean to think of logic and language as merely two of eight distinct and epistemologically equal gifts?
Gardner has observed that in some traditional cultures—in western Africa, for example—musical intelligence is counted the summum bonum of human achievement. Gardner has demonstrated that cultures adapt the concept of intelligence to their own purposes. But what about our present purposes? Since we do not get around in dugout canoes, learning to navigate by the stars is not terribly relevant to most of us.
It may be a real gift, and it may even rest on a distinct intelligence, but, so far as our acculturating institutions go, it is pretty marginal. Americans have a terrible problem with their principal acculturating institution—the public schools. Stevenson observes:. Stevenson and other traditionally-minded reformers, such as Diane Ravitch, argue that Gardner has given aid and comfort to educators who want to excuse mediocre performance and justify low standards.
Some unexpected people might be happy to embrace it. Like the imminent hanging described by Dr. Johnson, a word limit concentrates the mind. I am now convinced that Traub is not principally concerned with multiple intelligences, nor with an ideal education. Unrelentingly pragmatic, he believes American schools are not good and need to improve. MI is seen as at best a benign grace note, at worst destructive.
I am no apologist for American education. But I am convinced there is no one right way to achieve better schools. Widely divergent schools succeed in different countries and in ours. Our much-admired colleges are distinguished by their diversity. In The Disciplined Mind , I concluded that so varied a country as ours cannot agree on a single gritty and challenging curriculum.
Accordingly, I sketched six alternative K pathways. The Disciplined Mind outlines my personal vision: a pathway that begins by teaching the three Rs; project work that addresses essential questions and engenders motivation to pursue those questions; work that begins to introduce the major disciplinary divisions; and then a deep exploration of several major disciplines: science, history, mathematics, the arts, and considerations of ethics.
Due to fatal mutations from kernels of truth, neuromyths are typically defined as distortions, oversimplifications, or abusive extrapolations of well-established neuroscientific facts OECD, ; Pasquinelli, ; Howard-Jones, In the past decade, numerous surveys have been conducted in more than 20 countries around the world to measure the prevalence of neuromyth beliefs among educators Torrijos-Muelas et al.
A large-scale survey conducted in Quebec, Canada, by Blanchette Sarrasin et al. Students have a predominant intelligence profile, for example logico-mathematical, musical, or interpersonal, which must be considered in teaching. This is not an idiosyncratic case in the field see Table 1. In another survey conducted in Spain, Ferrero et al.
Table 1. Prevalence of beliefs, among educators, about the false claim that tailoring instruction to pupils' MI intelligence profiles promotes learning, in different countries around the world. The opening survey statement from Blanchette Sarrasin et al. On that basis, Gardner argues that MI theory does not qualify as a neuromyth. According to the author of Frames of Mind , some years ago, there may have been merit in exposing neuromyths, but the practice has gone too far and has now become problematic rather than helpful.
When taken for granted, such an unproven research hypothesis is considered as a false belief—a neuromyth derived from MI theory. To foster a more constructive dialog between scientists and educators, I follow Gardner's advice to properly qualify i. In the opening chapters of Frames of Mind , after disposing of traditional, IQ theories of intelligence, Gardner draws from brain science of the day to posit the basic premise of MI theory—that intelligences are distinct computational capacities that have emerged, over the course of evolution and across cultures, from the human cerebral cortex:.
We find, from recent work in neurology, increasingly persuasive evidence for functional units in the nervous systems. There are units subserving microscopic abilities in the individual columns of the sensory or frontal areas; and there are much larger units, visible to inspection, which serve more complex and molar human functions, like linguistic or spatial processing.
These suggest a biological basis for specialized intelligences p. Critical insights for MI theory also came from Gardner's earlier neuropsychological research conducted in the s on brain-damaged patients suffering from aphasia Gardner, b , Consistent with intelligences as biopsychological potentials to process information , Davis et al.
For instance, a brain lesion restricted to the left parietal lobe would selectively impair the capacity to discriminate living from non-living entities, i.
Myths may have nothing to do with the brain, but are, nonetheless, myths. Some of those claims clearly evoke the brain e. Actually, it does not matter. They are myths. Above all, the primary aim of MI theory was to expand the traditional, narrow IQ concept of intelligence to the whole spectrum of brain computational powers, not to provide brain-based educational recommendations.
MI theory posits that every individual has, at their disposal, a full intellectual profile of eight intelligences. From one individual to another, some intelligences exhibit low, some exhibit average, and some others exhibit strong biopsychological potentials, but the whole MI intelligence profile—a spectrum of brain computational powers working in synergy—is mobilized to adapt Homo sapiens to newly encountered, culture-bound situations.
Unlike Gardner's allegation, the claim in the opening survey statement is not that MI theory is a neuromyth. There has been considerable progress in brain science over the past four decades, and neurological underpinnings of the original rendition of MI theory Gardner, might need an update Gardner, , but MI theory is still a plausible, legitimate scientific theory of intelligence.
The false claim in the opening survey statement is that tailoring instruction to pupils' MI intelligence profiles promotes learning. Cultural values always interface the leap from science to practice. In this view, MI theory is a catalyst for reflection on a pluralistic, rather than a unitary, view of intelligence Gardner, a. However, in the closing chapter of Frames of Mind , from a purely speculative and prospective standpoint, Gardner is quite sympathetic to the idea of matching teaching materials and modes of instruction to MI intelligence profiles:.
Educational scholars nonetheless cling to the vision of the optimal match between student and material. In my own view, this tenacity is legitimate: after all, the science of educational psychology is still young; and in the wake of superior conceptualizations and finer measures [emphasis mine], the practice of matching the individual learner's profile to the materials and modes of instruction may still be validated.
Moreover, if one adopts M. Albeit speculative, and much to Gardner's surprise, these few lines have attracted tremendous interest in the education field. Gardner proposed, as an alternative to IQ-like paper-and-pencil standardized intelligence tests, natural observations of Homo sapiens freely evolving in ecologically valid, culturally meaningful contexts.
Their most ambitious initiative was the Spectrum Project , aimed at creating a museum-like, rich environment for children to deploy their biopsychological potentials intelligences. A set of 15 learning activities covering seven knowledge domains was created to provide a contextually valid assessment battery of MI intelligence profiles. Introspection and self-reflection. People with intrapersonal intelligence:. If you're strong in intrapersonal intelligence, good career choices for you are:.
According to Gardner, individuals who are high in this type of intelligence are more in tune with nature and are often interested in nurturing, exploring the environment, and learning about other species. These individuals are said to be highly aware of even subtle changes to their environments. Finding patterns and relationships to nature. People with naturalistic intelligence:. If you're strong in naturalistic intelligence, good career choices for you are:.
Ever wonder what your personality type means? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter. Implementation of multiple intelligences theory in the English language course syllabus at the University of Nis Medical School. Srp Arh Celok Lek. Cerruti C. Building a functional multiple intelligences theory to advance educational neuroscience.
Front Psychol. Early puzzle play: a predictor of preschoolers' spatial transformation skill. Dev Psychol. A study on different forms of intelligence in Indian school-going children. Ind Psychiatry J. Sternberg RJ. Dialogues Clin Neurosci. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellMind. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page.
These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification. I Accept Show Purposes. Visual-Spatial Intelligence People who are strong in visual-spatial intelligence are good at visualizing things.
Linguistic-Verbal Intelligence People who are strong in linguistic-verbal intelligence are able to use words well, both when writing and speaking. Logical-Mathematical Intelligence People who are strong in logical-mathematical intelligence are good at reasoning, recognizing patterns, and logically analyzing problems.
Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence Those who have high bodily- kinesthetic intelligence are said to be good at body movement, performing actions, and physical control. Musical Intelligence People who have strong musical intelligence are good at thinking in patterns, rhythms, and sounds. Interpersonal Intelligence Those who have strong interpersonal intelligence are good at understanding and interacting with other people.
Intrapersonal Intelligence Individuals who are strong in intrapersonal intelligence are good at being aware of their own emotional states, feelings, and motivations. Was this page helpful?
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