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Multiple intelligence?

Multiple intelligence?
It's a flaky theory

 John White    admits, he might well have decided not
1    ‘How many of your intelligences have to call them “intelligences” at all, but
 you used today?’ This notice at the “forms of knowledge”. This is not
 entrance to an Australian school refers psychology at all.
 to Howard Gardner’s multiple6    The further one looks into the
 intelligence (MI) theory, which is big theory, the more unsubstantiated it
 in school improvement in Britain and appears. There are eight criteria by
 across the world. Gardner claims that which an intelligence is identified, but
 there are eight or more intelligences - no reason is given for selecting them.
 not just one - including musical, Gardner stirs into his own flaky theory
 spatial and bodily-kinaesthetic as well  another[id:54239]one about symbols,
 as the linguistic and mathematical taken from aesthetics. He also holds
 sorts found in intelligence tests. There that each intelligence unfolds from
 is only one problem: the intelligences birth to maturity on the pattern of
 have no substance. biological development in plants and
2    This is not just of academic animal bodies.
 interest. Across the world, pupils are7    This is assumed, not argued, and it
 being taught that they are by nature is also false. As they grow up, children
 bodily or spatially or interpersonally usually become better at
 intelligent. They are becoming understanding other people, but this is
 imprisoned in mythical selfperceptions not because some seed of interpersonal
 which may well limit their intelligence has been genetically
 ideas about what they are capable of implanted in their brains and gradually
 learning. Granted, MI is a godsend to develops to its full potential. It is
 teachers dealing with children weak on because of what they learn through
 the basics and hampered by thoughts experience, from those around them
 of themselves as “thick”. and the writers they may read.
3    There is an excellent example of8    Back to Phil Beadle and the
 this in Channel 4’s recent series The thousands of other British teachers
 Unteachables. Teacher of the Year Phil sold on MI. Why do they think it true?
 Beadle, faced with a group of Do they go along with it because so
 disruptive and low-attaining 13-yearolds, much of today’s teaching world says it
 managed to get them sitting down delivers the goods? Because it
 long enough to tick their way through emanates from a Harvard professor
 an inventory of their various abilities. who must have done the proper
 The verdict was, as he told them, that research?
 most were strong in bodily and musical9    We don’t know. What we do know
 intelligence. He tailored his pedagogy is that for many of them it is a lifeline.
 accordingly, teaching punctuation They use it to change pupils’ beliefs
 karate-fashion and the concept of the about themselves, to coax them to
 adjective via lyrics sung to the guitar. learn in non-traditional ways. Does it
4    It was a riveting piece of teaching, matter, then, if MI theory leaks like a
 but does the theory behind it hold sieve as long as it works in practice? In
 water? Human beings are intelligent other words, does truth matter?
 creatures in all sorts of ways, and10    It should do, to teachers of all
 Gardner is right that there is no reason people. That aside, is it really the case
 to privilege abstract areas like that MI yields results? Zaak and Grace
 language, logic and mathematics. and the other young “unteachables”
 Intelligent behaviour is about may now think of themselves not as
 flexibility in the ways one reaches one’s thick but as bodily or musically
 goals and there are as many types of intelligent. That is the sort of person
 intelligence as there are types of goal. they are. They are made that way, so
 Whether we take boxing, biology, or how could they be expected to be
 bringing up children, each activity anything else? The danger of this kind
 brings its own kind of practical of thinking should be obvious -
 judgment. especially to teachers sceptical about
5    Gardner has corralled this variety the traditional idea of intelligence and
 into eight categories, not by its assumptions about mental
 painstakingly examining how people limitations. MI shares with this idea its
 behave, but through his own value determinist orientation, its belief that
 judgments about what intellectual nature calls most of the shots. In its
 competences are important. He is pluralistic way, it is as constraining as
 looking for “a reasonably complete IQ.
 gamut of the kinds of abilities valued The writer is Emeritus Professor of
 by human cultures” - and the multiple Philosophy of Education
 intelligences are what fit the bill. As heThe Independent