The Wall Street Journal-20080215-WEEKEND JOURNAL- Taste- Intelligence Designer
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WEEKEND JOURNAL; Taste: Intelligence Designer
Full Text (1191 words)This year marks the 25th publication anniversary of Howard Gardner's "Frames of Mind," detailing his influential theory of multiple intelligences ("MI theory," to devotees). According to Mr. Gardner, intelligence is not limited to proficiency in math and language. There are other, neglected intelligences people might harbor: bodily- kinesthetic, musical, spatial, interpersonal (the ability to interact well with people) and intrapersonal (knowing oneself).
Denounced or ignored by most scientists -- psychologist George Miller dismissed it as "hunch and opinion" -- MI theory was nonetheless embraced by the education community. One educator told writer James Traub: "Howard is the guru, and 'Frames of Mind' is the bible." Alas, many of that bible's adherents rushed willy-nilly into a variety of practices that Mr. Gardner not only did not endorse but in some cases condemned. "They were not," Mr. Gardner later wrote, "divining what I had really meant."
MI theory was for parents, meanwhile, a blessing and a curse. The blessing was that even children who scored poorly on traditional IQ tests might be gifted in other areas of intelligence. The number of smart kids promised to grow overnight.
Most parents didn't have a complaint with traditional IQ, just its merciless mathematical propensity to render half our children below average. MI theory offered several new bell curves on which our youngsters might prove intelligent. But that was also its curse: What good is getting into the Smart Club if it admits every mouth-breather from your bus stop? Likewise, beneficiaries of gifted-and-talented programs feared MI would sully their enclaves. This wasn't necessarily snobbishness; I recall that my own school's gifted program spared me daily poundings from schoolmates I thought were dumber than houseplants but I now realize were simply blessed with high bodily- kinesthetic IQs.
I asked Mr. Gardner what he thought of my blessing/curse idea, and he said it was "intelligent" (I don't know if he says that to everyone). He noted that, while some parents might recoil from an intelligence theory that brings so many into the fold, others might dislike that it opens up new vistas in which their children prove to be below average.
I hadn't thought about that. Contrary to popular misperception, Mr. Gardner explained, MI theory doesn't mean that every child is outstanding at something. Some children can be below average at everything. My heart sank.
My wife and I are searching, you see, for signs that our four boys will be exceptional, or at least employable. Mr. Gardner's theory was just the tonic, I thought, because it meant that each boy could be a genius in his own way. We could have our own version of Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, with all the boys not only above average but the smartest in the family -- just at different things." Alas, here was the kindly Harvard psychology professor hinting that, while there are more avenues to genius, there are also more opportunities to prove oneself stupid.
Perhaps sensing my fear, Mr. Gardner assured me that, absent gross retardation, you'll become above average at something if you work hard at it. The question, he notes, is at what cost. MI theory encourages us to look for signs of innate precociousness and then to develop them. What you don't want is to spend all your precious educational energy trying to improve on a dimension you just weren't meant to be great at. If everyone understood this, of course, the "American Idol" auditions would be less entertaining.
Mr. Gardner drives some people mad because he won't be pigeonholed. He is a social democrat, but many of the education ideas that he believes flow from MI theory have the ring of reforms -- e.g., focusing on traditional scholarly disciplines and cultivating practical experience and knowledge -- that Republicans support when they aren't in office. His approach to children evokes the bumper sticker ubiquitous on Volvos throughout America: "At [Such-and-Such] Middle School, All Children Are Honored" -- yet he believes that the real measure of education is the extent to which it prepares children to create value, a notion any devoted reader of The Wall Street Journal will approve of.
Mr. Gardner even holds in high regard the philosopher and scientist Michael Polanyi (1891-1976), revered in conservative intellectual circles, who explored the notion of tacit knowledge, or what Nobel economist Vernon Smith calls the difference between knowing what and knowing how. Attention to MI theory, Mr. Gardner argues, necessitates a greater emphasis on helping students develop know-how. Mr. Gardner also offers, inadvertently, some support for philosopher Robert Nozick's theory about why many intellectuals despise capitalism: Reared in a school system that still reveres cleverness despite what is often a surface-level acceptance of MI theory, intellectuals are subsequently thrust into a world that rewards value-creation, where they don't necessarily compete very well. Not surprisingly, Mr. Gardner notes that his detractors are often those who did better on the SATs than in life.
I asked Mr. Gardner what advice he has for parents who want to raise successful children. He warned that we should not try to make our children good at what we were good at, or good at what we did poorly. Our job is to help them become who they are supposed to be, not who we wanted to be. Conventional wisdom, to be sure, but not bad for a Harvard professor. Imagine the sports leagues and other extracurricular activities that would be eliminated in one blow were all parents to embrace that notion. The world might become less frantic on many fronts.
Still, I was puzzled by something that kept cropping up in Mr. Gardner's books, the notion that while those with high traditional IQs show greater ability to learn new skills, they are not guaranteed better performance in the real world. Not only does this suggest that old-fashioned IQ is still highly valuable, which Mr. Gardner acknowledges, but it also suggests that elbow grease matters, too. A person of average IQ who is motivated, he said, will do better in life than a high-IQ couch potato.
Yes! My wife and I may not be the brightest bulbs on the tree, but one thing we can't abide is the general layabout nature one finds inhabiting the otherwise healthy anatomy of your typical American teenager. What we can't bequeath to our children in superior genes we'll make up for with a strong work ethic. Honey, we're donating the TV to charity!
We'll certainly try to unveil our sons' latent intelligences with music lessons, basketball clinics and Boy Scouts (16 years after publishing his theory, Mr. Gardner added "naturalist" to his list). Businesses are now using MI theory; so discovering your child's intelligences might be increasingly important. But absent hard work, your kid still won't make it to easy street.
So much to worry about. A silver lining, however, is that Mr. Gardner recently came up with yet another intelligence: existential, which brings the total to nine. As I understand it, someone with this affliction ponders the meaning of life and worries over what will happen. Looks like I'm a genius at something after all.
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Mr. Woodlief blogs about family and faith at www.tonywoodlief.com.
