(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The theory that changed our views of learning, intelligence, and schools... [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-08 “But can you dance to it?” Howard Gardner I was first inspired by Howard Gardner’s Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences as a young and impressionable educator—yes, that long ago. Gardner was a Harvard-trained developmental psychologist from my hometown of Scranton, PA who had won a MacArthur Fellowship, or a Genius Grant, for his work on brain research and intelligence. Frames of Mind specifically spoke to a broader audience of educators beyond Gardner’s colleagues in academia, asking us to consider intelligence as having a variety of manifestations measured by complementary rubrics rather than multiple-choice tests. As an educator and parent of two young boys, I was often confronted with the comparative aspects of education. It was a bit like a Dick Clark “rate-a-record” segment on the original Bandstand. For those of us old enough to remember, Clark would ask two members of his audience to score two new songs on a scale of 0 to 100. The tunes’ rating generally revolved around two empirical factors -- its beat and its danceability. While the exercise was simplistic, everyone knew that the most important factor was “Can you dance to it?” The American Bandstand, after all, was a teenage dance show. Upsetting the Applecart The rating of intelligence, while a bit more formal, has endured a similar curt shorthand. Since the turn of the 20th century (Lewis Terman is credited with devising the first IQ scales based on the work of Alfred Binet in 1919.) The scale, like rate-a-record, evaluated intelligence based on the measurement of two axes—verbal and mathematical skills. Most IQ testing and intellectual measurement rely on some form of determining a subject's ability to use languages and manipulate and analyze numbers. This binary definition of intelligence persisted until Howard Gardner dared challenge it. Gardner proposed that intelligence had multiple “frames” and that the human brain could manifest intelligence in several ways that deserved to and were required to be measured. His theory of multiple intelligences (MI) has persisted for more than forty years since the publishing of Frames in 1983. It has also engendered some controversy among those who found the theory lacked “rigor:” These critics argue that Gardner’s definition of intelligence is too broad and that his eight different "intelligences" simply represent talents, personality traits, and abilities. Gardner’s theory also suffers from a lack of supporting empirical research. — Very Well Mind, “Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences”, by Kendra Cherry Despite the critics, the concept of multiple intelligences attracted the interest of those affected by the theory’s premise—students and teachers. At the time I first picked up the book, I was both. Many educators were quickly drawn to Gardner’s psychological theory and freely adapted some of its tenets in their own classroom applications. What made the theory so attractive to teachers was its intuitive feel-- it spoke to a reality that we were witnessing in our students’ performance but was difficult to quantify using current evaluative tools. We liked the beat, but would we dance to it? MI began to be applied in classrooms and used as a new assessment model even as the theory generated skeptics and critics, mostly from Gardner’s scientific community: how do we measure “smart” The Bell Curve The criticisms were pointed in defense of a system of evaluation, the IQ, with a spurious history of solid research. Terman’s early work on IQ was based on students recruited from teacher referrals whose quotients were measured at an early age and then reevaluated years later. The results were sketchy and sparse and revealed that the revisited IQs had fallen an average of 9 points, even as their parents reported that the children seemed just as bright as before. Another theoretical trait of the test was supposed to be its immutability over time. An IQ’s value, in part, lay in its reliability, the test was an evaluative tool that would arguably be as valid at birth as at the time of death. Once measured, a person’s intellectual ability would be determined for life. It was a theory that profiled children just beginning their schooling because it determined innate intelligence. Terman’s results, however, were tainted by generalizations based on a sample that was biased: ...the accomplishments of the "Termites" (the term for the children in the longitudinal study) could have been predicted on their socioeconomic status alone. These were mostly white, middle- to upper-middle-class men with opportunities and resources for success. Some argue that it wasn't even necessary for Terman to analyze the IQ dimension — he could have stopped with SES and call it a day. It's also noteworthy that very few minorities were in his sample (to be precise, he included 4 Japanese students, 1 black child, 1 Indian child, and 1 Mexican child in a total sample of 168,000). Psychology Today, “ Until Frames of Mind challenged that belief, intelligence was entangled with verbal and analytical skills as determined on a paper and pencil test. To many educators, Gardner's theory was a game changer. What educators were experiencing in their classrooms was quite different. Children were much more interesting than that. When educators thought more deeply, the fixed intelligence that schools measured as soon as children (sometimes as early as age 6) could be tested suggested that schools had a rather limited and perfunctory function of providing vocational enhancements to accompany their students’ innate intelligence. Children were divided into categories and classes were labeled according to learner expectations based on current evaluation models. However, experience told us that students in our classrooms were bright enough, even as our curriculum covered more technical topics, an evolving culture, and more content than ever before. For teachers, one of our favorite diversions was to marvel at how our former students performed in life after they left us. Some so much better, others, not quite what was predicted, by their school performance. Some educators began to wonder if something other than “innate ability” was at work. I began questioning the relevance of the curriculum and the truth inherent in many of our students’ own questioning of the practical value of what was being taught and how it was being taught. We all wondered how to evaluate not just student learning but also the systems within which learning occurs. My personal awakening came when my friend and fellow educator and I started a tutoring center for students having trouble in school. We coached students in the SATs and held “homework helper” sessions for those having difficulty with classroom lessons. We even taught study skills to help children learn to focus and retain information. The value of this experience was that we were dealing with a student population that was diverse in age, ability, and maturity. Frames of Mind became a lens through which we could understand how to help our young charges. What we learned over the 20 years of operating the center was that the differences in intelligence among our students were negligible. All of them could and did learn— that the responsibility for teaching and learning was a 50/50 proposition. As much as we were asking our students to show us what they learned, it was equally incumbent upon us to delve into their readily apparent gifts. Coaching the SATs was easy, there was little “intelligence” at stake in the score on these tests. Likewise, our youngest clients, most of whom came to us in various stages of distress because of reading or arithmetic issues, were otherwise bright, engaging, and willing to learn. We often remarked that in our experience of dealing with troubled students who were dropped off at our offices failing in school, none, if they had a choice, would choose to be a poor student. Doing well in school would be a whole lot easier, and enjoyable, than failing. Most behavior issues really masked, in our experience, a deep aversion to failure. It was better to choose to be a poor student than to try and fail to be a successful one. In a way, the choice helped save face. What these students had in common on the other hand was a wide variety of gifts that they shared with us but that weren’t part of any school evaluation. Would it surprise you that a failing third grader who couldn’t yet read, was an accomplished young musician (Caitlin)? Or that young man with SAT scores that would limit his college choices was, in fact, a gifted athlete (Marc)? The forensics team I helped coach as a high school teacher was filled with gifted speakers, actors, and debaters who by day were B and C students in class, and on Saturdays were competition finalists. real-world applications It became apparent that Gardner’s thesis was an avenue for us to explore when dealing with these students. Over a teaching career, educators oftentimes are unable to account for the anomaly of students who had not done exceptionally well in their classrooms but who were found to be very successful in business or their adult pursuits. Parents also witnessed their children, who had struggled in the classroom on a binary scale of assessment, suddenly blossom. Rather than attribute this anomaly to happenstance and “pluck”, Gardner’s theory suggested that our young charges' native intelligences were simply being undervalued and that experience in the world gave them platforms to demonstrate abilities difficult to measure on a test. What a hopeful thought. Is there any wonder why teachers would embrace such a theory? It would help explain and implode the cynical view of schools by detractors as places some students had to endure and whose later success was achieved despite their educational experiences. Parents would no longer have to ponder whether their children would survive school experiences that made them feel less than they were. Gardner, himself, was not letting up as he expanded his original 7 measurable intelligences to a potential 10 areas identified. As skeptics attempt to reframe Gardner’s theory as simply a redefining of the older concepts of modalities or learning styles theory, MI has persisted as a far more descriptive evaluation under real-world conditions. To take it a step further, how does one explain the evolution of human endeavor using an immutable scale of intelligence measurement? How do we explain the growth from generation to generation without allowing for the existence of a rather healthy ability of the human brain to adapt, grow, expand, and prosper given new conditions and more complex problem-solving needs? While no human is born with a “blank slate” there is little doubt that “language” and “mathematical” skills are developed. To deny this, would be to deny validated science of another field. Now imagine that a human being could be placed in a system that replicated another era in time—say the early 19th century. Once that human has grown into adulthood, allow our experiment to place that person in our present time. If we were to measure intelligence using the accepted binary system, one would expect that person to be equally as intelligent in either time. Both Gardner and Terman might agree on that. The question remains, however, could we use the same IQ evaluation (the IQ test) in both instances? For those who criticize Gardner’s measurement as being descriptive rather than scientific, their argument glosses over the need to alter the evaluative tool based on a rigid scale when the scale itself becomes an anachronism. They forget that the original “scale” was devised and developed as a “quick and dirty” measure that could be easily administered and scored. One of its main recommendations was convenience. The IQ test is, in fact, the weakness of its founding theory. Intelligence the ability of the brain to be able to adapt and reframe thought to find solutions to new problems. Might an 18th-century American living in an agrarian society be “smarter” to develop skills related to their natural habitat, the weather, and husbandry in addition to their language and math skills? Note: MI does not force us to the false dichotomy of choosing one or the other. Would an understanding of natural processes be as or more valuable? And projecting into the future—one in which language and analysis may be relegated to a machine—would it be likely that the brain would develop intelligences that would be more suitable for success in that future state? Foes of MI reject the “happiness factor” that attracted educators to Gardner’s theory. Forty years later, the hopefulness that humans are more intelligent in many more ways affirms the theory they find so abhorrent. Their limiting the ways intellectual ability could be measured distorts their own reasons for the measurement. Discovering our varied talents is far more helpful than determining the capacities we lack. The effort to pluralize “intelligence” is well worth our consideration because if Gardner is right, “genius” is far less than rare in a species that can use all the G2 it can muster. If Gardner is wrong, and his critics can realign intelligence with innateness, no amount of education will matter. In fact, schools are reimagined under Gardner’s theory. Public education was the Great American Experiment of the 20th century because it reshaped the nation. Originally devised as a means to assimilate immigrant populations that had streamed into America at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, publicly funded schools served the dual purposes of promoting citizenship and providing vocational training. Schools today, as then, serve a far more important purpose. Public schools level the playing field that had so long been tipped by privilege. Children living in poverty with limited experiences and opportunities would find in their public schools advantages once only within the reach of the wealthy classes. Public schools, especially after the Supreme Court integrated them in the mid-century, were the main front against racism and classism which helped promote America’s rise in the 20th century. School was a place to unleash the power of intellectual opportunity and curiosity— the old methods of measurement are an anachronism tied to pinpointing skills and deficiencies while assimilating and developing a workforce for an industrialized society. Schools are no better at creating intelligence than they are at measuring it. They are far better at identifying and developing intelligences through experiences provided in the classroom. Questions If MI is pseudoscience, the limitation of intelligence to a binary, overarching, easily scored method of evaluating man's potential, still fails because it reduces our understanding of human accomplishment and potential. How could we recognize Mozart’s genius? Mother Teresa’s saintliness? Amanda Gorman’s poetry? How to fathom Gandhi’s wisdom? If we could now measure Da Vinci’s IQ would it determine him a genius or was he simply talented? And how do we explain the literary gifts of James Baldwin’s or Frederick Douglass’ rise from slavery? If Lincoln’s intelligence quotient was measured in his time, would a modern “retest” show him to be any less wise? Each of these historical figures demonstrates what White might describe as intellectual competencies that defy pen-and-paper evaluation but define genius. The truth is that the complexities of intelligence as measured by their application in practice are the best argument to view MI as the current leading theory on how the mind works— on intelligence. Happy Birthday Frames of Mind (Basic Books, 1983) ! [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/8/2089391/-The-theory-that-changed-our-views-of-learning-intelligence-and-schools Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/