Howard Gardner on Multiple Intelligences An Article
Howard Gardner, a psychologist and professor from Harvard University, has revolutionized education with his “multiple intelligences theory.” This theory is based on the idea that our intelligence is not just an IQ one or “general intelligence, thus, if you get low marks at school it does not mean that you are not intelligent. It probably means that you have other capacities that may not be mathematical or linguistic, the ones which teachers assess the most. Apart from those two, Gardner says that we have six more intelligences, which are spatial, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic and kinesthetic. Howard Gardner asserts that the system we use to educate children is unfair, and inefficient, as not everyone has the same kind of intelligence, so the system picks up one kind, either logical or linguistic, leaving the rest of the students aside to develop their own specific skills and abilities. That is the reason why Gardner thinks we are not educating children as we should. He thinks, however, that teaching the same thing in eight different ways is not the way but providing software and assessment to kids in order to learn in an autonomous way as they go. On the other hand, children are given a very trivial knowledge about a lot of subjects and they usually learn by heart. They must memorize a bunch of facts, dates, definitions, and so on, which will be forgotten years later. But if somebody tries to carry out his or her own experiment, making questions and looking for answers, through analysis and research, the active learning takes place. According to Gardner, school must change and focus on other priorities, like making the child think scientifically to understand what a hypothesis is and how to test things out, that is, a self-assessment in which the student is the most active agent of learning. In order to have a good educational system, he asserts, we should, first, set good examples, examples of places where the new educational system really works and where students can show they are knowledgeable so parents realize this is the kid they want to have. Second, we need teachers to help children achieve their goals and give them the tools to be autonomous, independent and the centre of learning. Third, we need assessment schemes to show that this education works, instead of fifty-year-old multiple choice tests which are not useful enough. Finally, we need political commitment and support to implement a new education for the future.
JORGE QUINTANA PÉREZ 4º ESO A