July 11: Multiple Intelligences

Developmental psychologist Howard Gardner, whose theory of multiple intelligences has awakened educators to the inadequacy of teaching that fails to engage the broadly varied learning styles and capacities of students, was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania on this date in 1943. Gardner’s parents fled from Nuremberg, Germany, on Kristallnakht (November 9, 1938). Gardner’s 1983 book, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, posits that human intelligence is not a single, measurable entity but a collection of intelligences that can be relatively independent of each other. Since 1999, he has identified eight of these intelligences: linguistic, logic-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic — and he is searching for others. Gardner cofounded Project Zero at Harvard University (where he has spent his entire academic career), a think-tank dedicated to the study of human cognition, with a special focus on the arts and creativity. He has been active in school reform as a critic of standardized testing; his theory points to a far broader and inclusive vision of education that encourages teachers to experiment with many different methodologies. Gardner received the MacArthur “genius” fellowshp in 1981 and has been awarded honorary degrees from twenty-eight colleges and universities worldwide. His other books include The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach (1991), Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet (2001), and Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Twenty-First Century (2011).
“We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them to identify their natural competencies and gifts and cultivate these. There are hundreds and hundreds of ways to succeed and many, many different abilities that will help you get there.” —Howard Gardner