Project One: Multiple Intelligence EssayIn an essay of no more than two pages answer the following questions:
1. What unique combination of three (3) or four (4) intelligences marks your intellectual identity and how did you arrive at this awareness?
2. What goals and strategies, including courses in school, have you set in place to develop these skills?
3. Describe what you will be doing 15 years from now.
4. What resources do you have to do #3 above, and what obstacles will you have to overcome?
The following summary of Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Theory forms the background of information needed to do the Essay Project. More information can be found in the Syllabus for Humi 1 Creative Mind on this web site.
Background
The original IQ tests that were formulated in the early 20th century centered on Math/Logic skills and Language skills; these tests measured the major communicative skills needed to function in learning situations e.g. schools and other training programs like those associated with the military. For this reason, these tests measured how successful a candidate might be in these learning situations because communicative skills were needed. As a result, the importance of communication skills became central in IQ measurement. Today most IQ tests still have this background in communication skills to determine how well a candidate might be expected to do in school or how much a candidate has already learned about communication skills. Most of the work on IQ tests had been done by people associated with Psycho-metrics who wanted to assess candidates for their potential to meet the communication skills needed for further development in college-level communication skills.
Gardiner's theory
Gardner recognized, in the 1970's, that the IQ tests were generated by knowledge that came from the subject of Psycho-metrics which had an influence over all later developments in IQ testing such as SAT testing of High School students, and preparations for it leading to assessment of college level work, GRE tests for those seeking Graduate School potential, and other similar IQ testing. Gardner recognized that in the 20th century we had advanced our knowledge of brain and mind significantly so that intelligence testing needed a broader base. In addition to Psychometrics, Gardner wanted to develop the use of "scientific knowledge" associated with newer developments in Psychology, Biology, History of Developmental Psychology, Medical Science (particularly brain damage, strokes, trauma, etc), Experimental Psychology, History of Logic, Neuroscience, and Philosophy. In short, Gardner wanted to expand beyond the science of Psychometrics to use other scientific information associated with new developments in the sciences, especially the hybrid sciences like Evolutionary Biology and Biochemistry. In addition, he wanted to integrate the history of cognitive symbol systems with the history of Logic and Philosophy. Gardner was convinced that this larger background for mind and knowledge would enable Intelligence to have a larger scope than that provided by IQ testing alone; in addition, Gardner thought this expansion of our understanding of ourselves held a better chance of helping us appreciate "working together" to "create a world where more people will want to live". Intelligence Reframed, 1999, p.4.
Gardner originally used "eight" scientific criteria to identify and affirm candidates for separate intelligence standing. He found seven (7) independent intelligence domains that fulfilled the criteria for a separate module of intelligence, and he then added two more as possible. He held that more may develop as the criteria show that they are separate and unique domains or modules that have the Psycho-biological characteristics of a separate intelligence and, most importantly, have a historical pattern of evidence that shows their existence and developed state as usable symbolic systems in human social cultures. It seems to me, that Gardner wanted to expand our knowledge of what constituted human knowledge without losing the findings and history of Psychometrics and its emphasis on the communicative skills that schools and institutions like schools needed. But he wanted a more complete system of scientific and historically actual domains of knowledge that had proved themselves creative in human cognition.Gardner and his colleagues wanted to develop our understanding of IQ based on a more content level analysis of the "domains" or "distinct cognitive subject areas" that had developed as humanly organized arenas of knowledge over the longer course of human history. In short, they were interested in identifying IQ with skills that could be communicated because they had already developed into distinct subject areas that formed the content or subject matter of human knowledge developed over several centuries. Did the schools need more? That question, I think, is an overwhelming YES.In fact, schools from elementary schools through colleges had already developed subject areas or different "domains" of organized knowledge for intellectual development.
Because schools had already been developing many more subjects areas than the older IQ tests had identified, Gardner's theory quickly gained credibility with teachers. In actual fact, much of Gardner's work or something very much like it had already changed the structure of learning subjects in schools. I think this will be evident from the listing of all nine (9) of the intelligence domains that Gardner actually identified. In some very important ways, Gardner simply validated domains of knowledge that had already been developing for hundreds of years; he provided criteria for regarding them as distinct forms on intelligence, and held that each individual was a unique combination of several intelligences. He underlined that people needed to know what they were already capable of doing with their inheritied potential mind skills.
Multiple Intelligences
Each of Gardner's nine (9) intelligences is a psycho-biological potential that people have; they may or may not get recognized and/or develop their potential depending on "experience, culture, and motives" that happen to or fail to get recognition, use, development, and social support. Accidents can happen, talented people can get sick, suffer serious injury, or get little or no support for their potential. Some may just find the work and development needed to do what they love doing too difficult and too challenging. Or they may give up for a variety of different reasons. Excuses for not doing what one has a potential to do very well, can strangely seem be accepted for a thousand different reasons. Each person is, Gardner contends, a unique combination of 2, 3, or 4 intelligences; to meet those potentials is the work of the individual, other people in his or her social situation. Each person may be helped by the learning institutions, like schools that aim at helping people learn. Sometimes early recognition of the subjects that form this unique combination is crucial; sometimes schools can help immensely; sometimes family members who recognized their own capacities and developed them can help younger family members do the same. But development of one's potential psycho-biological gifts is the key to finding an enjoyable, creative life based on a persons potential skill development.
The Nine Intelligences
Each intelligence identified by Gardner and his colleagues was a domain centered around a "macro-subject" that was a "symbol" system made up of ideas, perspectives, paradigms, and theories. Symbol system means that every word used stood for an idea or cluster of ideas that acted to define each word by explaining its meaning; likewise each part of the symbol system had to explain in words the meaning (concept). This ability to define meaning, engineer formation of definitions in an organized way, develop perspectives and paradigms all came together to give an encompassing unity to the "macro-subject". Hence, the use of the term "domain" to explain each "macro-subject."
The Linguistic Intelligence centers on language and has been the most historically recognized and developed intellectual domain beginning very early in human pre-history. It gradually developed from ideograms into fully comprehensive and sophisticated symbol systems. It reaches a full "end-state" in a rich variety of language skills that range widely throughout all the other intelligences.
But language skills themselves range from grammatically correct sentences, to understanding meanings to words rarely used in everyday communication. The capacity to put sentences together clearly and concisely, to summarize accurately a wide ranging set of otherwise incoherent sentences, to express one's inner life, to express oneself in poetry and other forms of imaginative words are all part of language skill. Speaking, listening, writing are all linguistic forms; essays, novels, short stories,summaries, paraphrasing, explaining, are all active expressions of language. Any verbal or written communication connected with History, Philosophy, Science, Art, enhances these subjects themselves because the language used is a domain of symbolic forms that require "saying well and artfully" the right words to communicate the "right ideas."
The love of language can be seen early in life especially in families where parents or adult relatives read and say the words that communicate the symbols of the intelligence involved; sometimes it is telling stories orally; sometimes it is poetry or short stories; sometimes it arises from peers who seem unusually adept at words; when it happens it can capture some latent psycho-biological potential that attracts and draws a young person. Great speakers, writers, and lovers of words have been generated by small beginnings that became interests, hobbies, loves, skills, and they created proficient artists of language.
Sometimes schools can generate a love for clear, coherent essay writing; sometimes it is just a remarkable way of focusing student attention on clear analysis; sometimes it is speaking clearly, reading well written essays, writing coherently and concisely; sometimes it is a matter of listening attentively because of the words used. All these ways can reveal a love for and desire to develop language and linguistic skills. People who sense that we "live within"" a house of language whereby meanings of words bring us into a social human world can recognize a certain "enigmatic" character to language and to the human species that gives us all the ability to share ourselves with one another despeite all our differences.
Logical-Math Intelligence represents a wide-ranging type of intelligence just as the linguistic intelligence does. It is as old or older than language because it seems to be developed in people before any language skill development needed to take place. Sometimes it is called the "non-verbal" intelligence because of this. Galileo even claimed that the book called the Universe could not be read by using words because the language of logic and math were the only accurate way. Fascination with time, number, quantity, patterns, calculations, models, statistics, probabilities, computers, distances, Venn diagrams, syllogisms, analogies, graphs, averages, and percentages all show the math/logic intelligence in use.
Young people often sense a math/logic intelligence when they have an experience of scientific method in a classroom or lab that is required to answer questions like "what per cent of states in the U.S. border oceans? or how many cells are in a square millimeter of a leaf? or what per cent of students work more than 20 hours per week? Sometimes projects connected with measurements, probability, or putting things in logical order can get involvement that is sensed more quickly by some than others. Math/Logic potential is often the easiest intelligence to discern very early in life, and for that reason parents and children themselves can readily identify it for ongoing development.
The Musical Intelligence is another very old human intelligence that refers to performance, composition, understanding, and fascination with harmony, melody, rhythms, and emotional understanding. Sometimes it's disclosed in a fascination with the poetic-like character of the words or the sound and melodies of musical instruments used. Sometimes its the joy found in hearing, feeling, and being captured by the rhythms of the melodies that speak powerfully to people very early in life.
Skills with a musical instrument in performance are a clear example of musical intelligence; ability to compose, combine, connect with others' instruments are also sigrns of skill potential. Music has many different sub-forms: classical, jazz, country, blue grass, rock, hip hop and many other combinations. Prodigies like Ella Fitzgerald and Yehodi Menuhin are examples of people who had an uncanny sense very early in life that some form of music was their great love; they had the courage to identify it early enough so that other people could help them develop.
Recognizing different styles and types of music, developing playful attitudes, and/or dreams of a musical career are some ways that the intelligence gets recognition in school and home. In many situations, reassurance of the potential is needed because the discipline associated with the development of skills can be a fierce obstacle for a "budding" musician. Nonetheless, it is well known that the symbolic form of communication through music via melody, tone, blend, and harmony can generate a passionate love affair with music's power to carry an artist through tough times. Some of Gardner's multiple intelligence co-workers found that music in itself was so worth knowing about that it conveyed the richness of our cultural heritage just as much as science or technology; in addition, other forms of intelligence (e.g. bodily-kinesthetic, intra-personal, and interpersonal) are powerfully captured and enhanced by music. Sometimes it is music itself that enhances success in other intelligence skills.
Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence
This intelligence refers to skills used in dancing, playing a musical instrument, displaying athletic prowess, drawing and coloring a painting, or doing surgery skillfully. An enormous amount of balance, quick agility, expert control, and developed movement is manifested in choreography, sports, ballroom dancing, playing the violin, doing brain or heart surgery, and drawing a work of art. The quickness involved in these bodily skills shows a mental computation and performance level that often astonishes experts.
The intelligence associated with the use of muscles and limbs in all of these situations where experts have been identified validates the idea that mind, brain, and nervous system all together form the psycho-somatic unit that is each person. Young people can often be astounded at their own capacities to move quickly in expert ways as they play a game of basketball,soccer, water polo, football, baseball or some other sport. They may never develop to a highly professional level, but they can learn the fulfillment and joy attached to playing the game well. What a skilled professional learns, however, is that externalized ideas done skillfully via body movements is like the art of an architect or a sculptor externalizing an idea in clay, or a chemist manipulating a three dimensional molecular model. Campbell and Dickinson cited an example of how a very shy, doubtful and unhappy six year old child who couldn't learn the alphabet became free from her prison and began to develop her linguistic intelligence and a few other intelligences when she learned how to dance out the letters of the alphabet. Making ideas external from mind to body may not be what Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, and other experts think they are doing, but they are feeling and doing it.
Spatial/Visual Intelligence
This intelligence is reflected in navigation, map making and reading, sensing geographical places, sketching, drawing, designing a home or a smaller or larger structure, coloring spaces, making a movie or CD, and many other forms of visualizing . People may feel these forms of the intelligence as needs to say things in colors, spaces, shapes rather than find words for the ideas. Einstein is reported to have focused so much intelligence on the physics of light because he constantly felt the need to feel what "it would be like to sit on a beam of light" like a child would sit on and ride a horse. We have known for a long time that every abstract idea can be learned and understood by everyone better if it is taught with some audio-visual skill. Likewise, the spatial/visual intelligence we all know is older than any other because it is found throughout pre-history in cave drawings, ideograms, and a variety of ways found in the flora and fauna of time long ago.
Visual/spatial intelligence can be manifest when one has to navigate an unfamiliar terrain, visualize details, formulate meaning to be illustrated through film, find one's way when lost, read and decode charts, move furniture, draw mind-maps, or doodle while reproducing objects in visible forms. If all intelligence is a way of making something invisible become visible, then pictures and images make it easier for the teacher and learner to cooperate in the venture of learning. It allows people to learn by seeing and observing; it recognizes mental imagery needed in dealing with space to be navigated, and it makes learning abstract ideas clearer and more effective because images are the roots of ideas in the first place.
Both Einstein and Newton were scientists who had a predominant visual/spatial intelligence as well as a logic/math intelligence. The combination of intelligences with a visual/spatial intelligence not only seems most natural because all mental abstractions are from sensory images, it is also proven to be a better teaching method. Whenever a teacher offers pictures, projects, flow charts, problems to solve, visual outlines, mind maps to be created, or aids to memory, the end result is more effective learning.
Interpersonal Intelligence
This intelligence aims at understanding other people, enjoying the differences and similarities between people, working together, valuing interpersonal relationships, perceiving quickly feelings or motives, influencing others, and developing ways to foster social cohesiveness. Sometimes it is simply called "social" intelligence or "emotional intelligence" (Daniel Goleman e.g.). It seems especially appropriate and needed in social life today because so many people work everyday with one another and yet are also deprived of close personal relationships that are stable and caring. In a culture known for its individualism, it is no wonder so many people feel strongly the need to be "people persons."
In business today the Interpersonal intelligence is crucial because it can help immensely in every phase of business from problem solving, to marketing, to sales training ,to helping people cooperate, foster brainstorming, compromise, achieve coherence, and sense what is unsaid or confusing. In addition, the interpersonal individual asks questions, clarifies what needs people may have or worry about, and elicits ideas and decision making from groups of individuals. In short, the interpersonal likes other people so much that he or she makes certain they are involved and helped to bring their best ideas forward. This is often the way the interpersonal person makes the whole group more creative than they would have been otherwise.
When Daniel Goleman wrote his books on "Emotional IQ"" he was talking about the Intra-personal Intelligence and the Interpersonal Intelligence together because he saw them connected together. Both intelligences required understanding of and constructive use of emotions; in particular Goleman found that both intelligences required self control and self direction; he cited "controlling and using anger wisely", working for long-range goals, persevering over time needed to accomplish goals, sensing the feelings of others, and developing compassion and empathy for other people. People with these psycho-biological tendencies already show an inclination toward developing the interpersonal (as well as Intra-personal) intelligence.
People with compassion for others often find it enjoyable to help people succeed; they make people feel welcome, promote working together and accomplish goals together. They often like to have people discuss in groups, and share their projects; Gardner found this intelligence in religious and political leaders, clinical psychologists and psychotherapists, ministers and teachers as well as in business leaders and managers.
Intra-personal Intelligence
This intelligence is connected with the Interpersonal but it focuses on self understanding; one's emotions are quickly and easily identified when a person has the intra-personal psycho-biological potential. This is often why they can control their feelings and use them so productively. They also have clear goals, dreams, hopes, frustrations and desires and can use the energy they have to make these aspects work beneficially for them and others. Sometimes this intelligence is associated with "our inner world" because it carries with it an awareness of the "inner conversation" that is often associated with the self understanding involved. Socrates, in particular, was noted for the pursuit of self understanding because he associated it with understanding what we were living for, what strengths and weaknesses we had, honest self appraisal, and willingness to admit failures as well as accomplishments. The cultivation of wisdom and the virtues associated with acting wisely about what was authentically good for us marked the person of self-understanding. This accurate self understanding nourished self respect, self esteem, and confidence based on self understanding. They could admit quite candidly their own mistakes without feeling diminished. Often this intelligence is marked by clear goals, well articulated myths or ideals for which the person is aiming; in addition, it is associated with the ability to tell one's own story even when it dramatically went through a major change of direction. Sometimes a life that coped with illness or some set back that required courage or a re-birth of one's life toward a new set of goals took place in the story.
People with an intra-personal psycho-biological potential are often good questioners of others because they realize the importance of answering questions themselves. They like to hear others, help others articulate who they are, what they love and aspire to; the intra-personal individual already carries the uniqueness of the individual within their own self understanding. This only makes them stronger at helping others to find and feel confident about themselves; this is one reason why they are so good working at an interpersonal level where they can thrive by getting other people to collaborate. In other words,a person's sense of self can work to carry a large amount of social interaction of a very positive sort. Encouragement, sympathy, reassurance, honest self recognition of other people's needs can be a catalyst for the intra-personal individual to help less confident people become more self-assured and appreciated.
We can help people become more self-aware by asking them to create their myth or dreams for the future; likwise we can become more self aware ourselves by doing the same thing. What are the big purposes I am living for? What dramatic events changed my life? How did they do it? How did I cope with cancer or some serious illness?
Naturalist Intelligence
This intelligence is one of those that Gardner thinks is a strong possible candidate, but so far as I know there has been no overwhelming conclusion about it. I mention it here because it seems more likely to have the range of history behind it. At any rate, it is clear today that the whole interest in the primacy of the Environment and its ability to support life makes the Naturalist an individual with a long standing community of people who recognize that life itself is a great biological gift no matter how it happened to be so important for all of us. Anyone fascinated with nature, living things, caring for life, the environment, nature, state and national parks, oceans, mountains, earth, air, medicine, diet, health care, hospitals, and care of everything connected with life is a "naturalist." It includes nurses, doctors, farmers, hunters, cooks, gardeners, rangers, life science researchers, and many others.
Naturalists can be in sciences connected with life or they can be anyone who feels nature has a large role to play in support of life. For most of human history people lived in close connection with nature because people had to live dependent from day to day on nature. Human beings naturally formed a community with nature and reflected this community in their stories, myths, and cultural images of life. Today with development of technical rationality and our large populations we have made an impact on nature that calls for more attention to what is happening to our environment resulting from what we do.
Much of what Environmentalists in science claim for our adverse impact on nature does require attention and corresponding shifts in the way we live. Today some of the issues are more controversial than they were 15 yeas ago, but they do require a balanced critical assessment especially on the part of the world most responsible for the adverse impact on nature. At any rate, the Naturalist as an Intelligence seems dedicated to the concerns about life that have had been impacted adversely today.
Existential Intelligence
This intelligence is associated also, like the Naturalist, with a high possibility of entrance into one of the nine, but it is still not conclusive. Yet, I think it worth inclusion here because it too, like the naturalist, has a long history behind it and has been associated with some kinds of issues that seem unique to the human mind's capacities to know. The existentialist is concerned about metaphysical or spiritual dimensions of human experience. For example the enigmatic questions: what is the meaning of human existence? is there a purpose for human life? is there a transcendent or ultimate being? a God? what happens after death? can we know anything about life after death? about a transcendent being or a God?
These questions are both answerable and unanswerable at the same time; they can't be finally answered, yet they can be answered in a way that "copes" with the question and seems to provide a "way of living" about the coping stances we make. They are enigmatic or unknown mysteries, yet some kind of experiences can provide some inadequate answers that help focus on ways of coping.
People who have this form of intelligence love the sense of mystery whether it is associated with poetry, myth, religion, or philosophy. They find something in the coping metaphors that seems to fall within what can be experienced in a way that is vague, experiential, subjective, and transcendent. In religions or a religious dimension of life the existential intelligence can be found; it can also be found all over the world in the early natural religions and later on in the world religions we have today. Moreover, it is found in literature and poetry, and in metaphysics as part of philosophy. In short, there seems to be enough of a symbolic system that includes the metaphysical and the transcendental for this form of intelligence to be included in the nine.
Summary
Gardner's nine multiple intelligences seem to form an adequately inclusive set of intelligences that do justice to human mental activity the world over. Be sure to answer all 4 questions as well as you can at this time in your life; your goals and purposes as well as your clear plans are important to identify, and a realistic assessment of where you want to be 15 years from now can be an important motivating power in your life. Any foreseen obstacles can be a realistic assessment that makes the future a part of your plan now.
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