Gardner

...A Rounded Version

I have been reading along with all the postings and thinking about the whole idea of multiple intelligences and there are several things that have come to mind. A couple of them I have touched up previously and I will add a new twist to the discussion.

First of all, I agree with Gardner that there exists several “intelligences”. I have a problem with this term but will use it for the sake of this discussion. I prefer to think that each of us have several “abilities” which can be determined through the taking of LSIs. In his definition of intelligence on page 15, what Gardner has said in my opinion is that intelligence is culturally bound. “an intelligence entails the ability to solve problems or fashion products that are of consequence in a particular cultural setting or community.”

If someone from one culture comes into the environment of another, how can their intelligence be viewed as being the same? I shall use Yao, as an example, and I hope she does not mind. We all are aware that Yao is very intelligent. She is struggling within our culture to master the language however when she first arrived here, I am sure the intelligences that she would have excelled in at home in Beijing were not shining through in our culture. This then becomes a limiting factor for determining MIs—they are culturally biased.

On page 37, Gardner goes on to say “the individual has developed the potential to deal with specific contents in her environment”. He doesn’t state what that environment is and this poses another problem. Does this problem-solving ability only work in one environment or will it work across various environments? Under what circumstances? If the problem-solving ability changes according to new environments, what changes in behaviors then are factors in influencing these intelligences? If behavior is as Guild and Gagner state, a combination of cognitive, conceptual and affective domains then what part does behavior play in MIs?

Brian talked a bit about Gardner’s idea of intelligence being biopsychological. Having studied anatomy and physiology in Nuclear Medicine, I have learned that there are both sympathetic and non-sypathetic functions in the brain. The mapping of the brain to show where these intelligences occur do show that they are separate in that it is the brains way of “protecting” itself should there be injury. By having different locations for each, an injury to a particular part of the brain does not mean a loss of all these intelligences. The other incredible part to this is that when an injury does occur, other parts of the brain can SOMETIMES take on the functions that have been lost. This is not in all cases but it has been documented.

Finally, another problem that I have with MIs is the fact that they could have the potential to be used to re-introduce educational streaming. I remember back in my high school days that there existed two routes, academic and general. These existed in two separate provinces where I attended school. If you were planning on attending university, you took the academic route which included maths, sciences, languages etcetera. In the general stream, for those not planning on university but perhaps trade school or vocational colleges, there were accounting, marketing, auto-body and the likes of these more “practical” courses. If by determining MIs, could we not start encouraging students to go into music, or gymnastics or science? I was told to follow the arts, which I resisted until my very late years, but my appreciation for the arts never swayed. I am concerned that MIs would be used to start filling the gaps in professions that will become vacant as a result of the large number of baby-boomers who will be retiring soon. Should we use MIs to label and then pigeon hole these students to pursue areas of study they may not be interested in based solely on the fact that they are “good at something"? I think not.