Howard Gardner and Multiple Intelligences
Stephanie Kilhullen
ENG101
The Theory of Multiple Intelligences
On Howard Gardner and Multiple Intelligences The beginning of the school year is possibly one of the most stressful experiences for a student to endure due to mandatory placement testing—ultimately deciding where and what level a student belongs to based upon their test scores. However, what if a student does not do well on the placement testing because the subjects that the educational system deem ‘intelligent’ are not the student’s strongest attribute? Based upon the low score, the educational system would declare that student to be unintelligent. But is that student really unintelligent? Or are we “brain-washed to restrict the notion of intelligence to the capacities used in solving logical and linguistic problems”(Gardner), thus believing in being unintelligent? Doctor Howard Gardner, who published his opinion on intelligence in Frames of Mind during the nineteen-eighties, theorized that the intelligence of a human being is not defined by one particular capability, but is defined by multiple capabilities. Although many criticize that there is little evidence to prove that Doctor Howard Gardner’s theory is true, I cannot help but find the points that Gardner argues in his publication to be very plausible and relatable to my own personal experiences. Before Gardner declares his thesis on intelligence, he writes a scenario using the model of intelligence that society accepts: intelligence quotient tests. In the scenario there are two children of the same grade level taking the exact same test, but it is revealed that one student received a score above the average level of intelligence, while the other student received a moderately normal score. Later on in life, Gardner explains, the student who had gotten moderate scores became successful in mechanical engineering, while the student who was supposedly far more ‘intelligent’ had little success after graduating school. While
ENG101
The Theory of Multiple Intelligences
On Howard Gardner and Multiple Intelligences The beginning of the school year is possibly one of the most stressful experiences for a student to endure due to mandatory placement testing—ultimately deciding where and what level a student belongs to based upon their test scores. However, what if a student does not do well on the placement testing because the subjects that the educational system deem ‘intelligent’ are not the student’s strongest attribute? Based upon the low score, the educational system would declare that student to be unintelligent. But is that student really unintelligent? Or are we “brain-washed to restrict the notion of intelligence to the capacities used in solving logical and linguistic problems”(Gardner), thus believing in being unintelligent? Doctor Howard Gardner, who published his opinion on intelligence in Frames of Mind during the nineteen-eighties, theorized that the intelligence of a human being is not defined by one particular capability, but is defined by multiple capabilities. Although many criticize that there is little evidence to prove that Doctor Howard Gardner’s theory is true, I cannot help but find the points that Gardner argues in his publication to be very plausible and relatable to my own personal experiences. Before Gardner declares his thesis on intelligence, he writes a scenario using the model of intelligence that society accepts: intelligence quotient tests. In the scenario there are two children of the same grade level taking the exact same test, but it is revealed that one student received a score above the average level of intelligence, while the other student received a moderately normal score. Later on in life, Gardner explains, the student who had gotten moderate scores became successful in mechanical engineering, while the student who was supposedly far more ‘intelligent’ had little success after graduating school. While