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June 25, 2009
Does multiple intelligence exist?
But Gardner, a professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who won a prestigious MacArthur Foundation "genius award" in 1981, has had enormous influence, particularly in our schools.Not Every Child Is Secretly a GeniusBriefly, he has posited that our intellectual abilities are divided among at least eight abilities: verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalistic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.
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The only problem, with all respect to Gardner: There probably is just a single intelligence or capacity to learn, not multiple ones devoted to independent tasks. To varying degrees, some individuals have this capacity, and others do not.
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The theory of multiple intelligences fundamentally conflates intelligence and motivation. It's a fatal flaw. Motivation is certainly important, and it works alongside intelligence to produce results. However, having the raw biological machinery of intelligence is simply irreplaceable.
I look at the eight categories and I too see their seduction. When I learned about multiple intelligences I accepted it as one of those obviously true things. Now looking at it it seems more like horoscopes, a flattering scatter-shot that appeals to our vanity.
Posted by OneEyedMan at June 25, 2009 11:36 AM
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