TAKING ON GARDNER

Gardner the Freedom-fighter

I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so that they will be positioned to make it a better place. Knowledge is not the same as morality, but we need to understand if we are to avoid past mistakes and move in productive directions. An important part of that understanding is knowing who we are and what we can do... Ultimately, we must synthesize our understandings for ourselves. The performance of understanding that try matters are the ones we carry out as human beings in an imperfect world which we can affect for good or for ill. (Howard Gardner 1999: 180-181)

Available On-line at http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm

In a previous post Multiple Intelligences (MI) I have tried, by using images of famous people, to provide examples of Gardner's 9 intelligences.
Gardner with his research on education has shaken the foundations of a schooling that held there were only the logico-mathematical and linguistic kinds of intelligence that could be IQ tested.
He has broken the walls of this prison so that children of all talents can feel appreciated and acknowledged for their specific gifts and contributions to the community. This is a good deed.
Furthermore, teachers all over the world are inspired to apply MI-theory to their teaching, generally making their programs more balanced. Please take time out to read Ember12 weblog on a supportive critique of the application of Gardner's theories.

Gardner's new prison

There are many who question Gardner's small group of intelligences, in particular, John White (2004), in his lecture at the Institute for Education, University of London. In the lecture he acknowledges that the idea that intelligence is not tied to IQ has been a liberating force, and that students can experience self -esteem when included with their particular talents. However; White points out that there is no scientific research supporting Gardner's finite group of intelligences. Many philosophers and psychologists agree with the common sense idea, that there are innumerable forms of intelligence. The philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1949:1948) is quoted "the boxer, the surgeon, the poet and the salesman" engage in their own kinds of intelligent operation, applying "their special criteria to the performance of their special tasks"
Is Gardner justified in distilling this vast variety of human intelligence into eight or nine caterogies? Or is MI a myth? The lecture explores this question. It examines why Gardner thinks these intelligences exists. The short chapter 4 "What is intelligence" of only 11 pages from the book Frames of Mind (1983)
is thoroughly discussed in White's lecture.

White says that students in several schools are being given questionnaires to fill out, profiling their intelligences. Furthermore that "some schools give their students smart cards, the size of a credit card, inscribed with their preferred intelligences."

To me this indicates a new form of prison: at an early age the human being is put into another little box!
From my own understanding of Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy human intelligence is not fixed but works and weaves in three domains of human activity; that is in thinking (head, nerve-sense system), in feeling (heart, rhythmic breathing-circulation system) and in the deeds (the limbs system). This sugegests that human intelligence is in a state of flux.
A child who struggles with maths, rather than being labelled as lacking maths intelligence when young, could become a brilliant mathematician - who knows?

ECCE HOMO
In the heart the weaving feeling
In the head the light of thinking
In the limbs the strength of will
Weaving enlightening
Strengthening weaving
Enlightening strengthening
Lo, this is man.

Rudolf Steiner

Reference:

White, J. (2004), Howard Gardner: The Myth of Multiple Intellegences. lecture given at the Institute for Education, University of London (17.11 2004).