Multiple Intelligence: Social Reform or Liberal Ideal

Intelligence is defined as 'the ability to learn or understand from experience, ability to acquire and retain knowledge.' Multiple is defined as 'having or consisting of many parts.' The words multiple intelligence would, by definition, tell us that learning, understanding and retaining experiences consist of many layers and elements.

Multiple intelligence as suggested by Howard Gardner in 1993 would direct us to the idea a human's intelligence is not simply a component of physical being, but a vast reservoir of thought processes waiting to be cultivated and explored.

Gardner theorized that several intelligences were used to allow man the ability to learn complex skills and ideas. He summarized that seven very distinct and independent intelligences are encased within the human brain. (Gardner, Kornhaler and Wake, 1996).

The seven intelligences are listed below, along with notable person who displayed excellence in this area of intelligence. This is done to allow the reader to associate the various intelligences and to be able to reach a comparative understanding of the factors surrounding the intelligences.

Verbal-Linguistic: associated with words and language. (Abraham Lincoln and Maya Angelou)

Logistical-Mathematical: deductive thinking, reasoning, numbers and recognition of abstract patterns. (Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawkins)

Visual-Spatial: sight and visualization of objects and creation of inter-mental images. (Pablo Picasso)

Intrapersonal: awareness of spatial realities, metacognition (Maria Montessori, Sigmund Freud)

Interpersonal: person to person relationships, diplomacy. (Mother Teresa, Jimmy Carter)

Musical: recognize tones, environmental sounds, rhythm and beats. (Midori, Paul McCartney)

Bodily-Kinetic: associated with the body and inner working. (Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Christiaan Barnard)

Naturalist: knowledge of living world, classify flora and fauna and species of an environment (James Audubon, Charles Darwin). This was not one of the original seven recognized intelligences.The idea of multiple intelligence as a social reform presents many interesting questions. Gardner believed that each of the intelligences operates as independent systems following their own guidelines. Various intelligences come together to give a person their unique abilities.

My own opinion would follow Gardner's viewpoint. Social reform in terms of education could be better followed and achieved if a child were given the opportunity to express themselves and learn by the way their brain works and not by the confines of an academic program structured to meet the needs of the many, instead the needs of the one.

To illustrate the theory I would offer a case study of a mother and daughter and how the academic system has helped one and hindered the other. The mother was able to conform to the rigid educational system and thrived, whereas her daughter had blocks in her mental abilities and was notable to adhere to the system and was labeled as 'slow' and as a 'slow learner.'

Profile One: The mother, a 40 years old, normal birth and childhood. Parents divorced when she was four, and until age 15 life was unstable. As a child enjoyed school. She began to read at age four, was very imaginative and a good storyteller. She was musically oriented, but spent much of her time alone. She had a few problems at school, but was diagnosed as hyperactive at age 8 and was medicated. She left primary home at age 15 to live with other parent, and her life stabilized at this time, and she was removed from medication. Did well in standardized testing.

Profile Two: The daughter, 16 years old, normal birth, diagnosed at age two with severe speech defect, but intelligence test showed an high I.Q. Given speech therapy from age two to seven. She was placed in special education classes from the age of three. At age eight, she was in mainstream education with continued support. Child's father left home when she was three and she suffered trauma from this event, adding to what her doctors felt were feelings of abandonment. Father has had no contact with child. Because child was unable to express herself verbally at a young age, she was not able to conform to the standard education patterns and this has continued to haunt her to the present day. Child's ability to read and write has been hindered because of the 'focus' on her disability.

Both child and mother passed through an identical education system, differing only by a number of years. Teaching methods have changed little in this time frame, although curriculum has. Whereas the mother was given more opportunity to excel once she conformed to the system, the daughter was unable to progress. Her inability to conform left her in an educational 'black hole'.

The daughter's educational dilemma highlights the weakness of the theory of conformity in education. Had she been accessed throughout her education journey by her intelligence as opposed to her disability, it is highly probable that she could have achieved a greater standard cognitive development.

It is my opinion that education should be tailored to the student, not the student to the education. All children have the potential to be a Einstein or a Picasso, it should be the educational system that nurtures this potential.

It could be argued that to access intelligence and based a curriculum on a child by child basis is utterly impossible. I would argue that since children are unique, testing of intelligence should be the same,

Social reform can only be hastened if all people can be given an equal footing on which to contribute to their unique individual abilities. All people are intelligent. It is the responsibility of the educator and the educational system to find and enhance a pupil's strongest points, based on abilities and not rely on standardized testing as a basis on how and what a child can be taught.

It is our need to place labels and categorize a person that has led to our failure to embrace what sets each of us apart: our unique intelligence.