Although I was familiar with this concept in general when I was doing my Masters in Education (I audited Dr. Gardner’s class at Harvard), it was not until recently that I actually got to read his book, Frames of Mind – The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. His theory is based on partial evidence from the domains of science that deal with how the mind works – neurobiology and neuropsychology. This partial evidence is why it still exists as a theory and has not been proven completely. But personally I find this theory to be quite aligned with my life experiences.
Dr. Gardner seeks to disprove the notion that intelligence in a human being can be completely measured by common standardized tests like the IQ test. In his own words, “the score of intelligence tests does predict ones ability to handle school subjects though it foretells little of success in later life”. He proposes that there are seven different kinds of intelligences that are physically autonomous of each other in every human’s brain – linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spacial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences. Physical autonomy of each of these intelligences means that the capacities that make up each of these intelligences are localized in different areas of the brain. For example, the capacities that make up musical intelligence are pitch (or melody) and rhythm. There is evidence that shows that “the mechanisms by which pitch is apprehended and stored are different from the mechanisms that process other sounds, particularly those of languages”. It has also been shown that any injury to areas in the left hemisphere of the brain which normally process many of the linguistic capabilities of the person, leaves the musical capabilities which is normally housed in the right hemisphere mostly intact. Dr. Gardner, in his book, goes on to describe the evidence he has uncovered to underscore the seven independent intelligences that exist in every human being.
Being a computer engineer by training, I cannot help but provide an analogy of this concept to a computer system. We can imagine each of these “raw” human intelligences as similar to independent components of a computer system, which serve different functions in a computer. So just like how there different computer components like networking , storage, video processing, audio processing and so on, you would have these 7 different kinds of intelligences in a human brain. Within a computer system, different computer applications would require accessing different computer components. For example, an application that displays streaming video onto the computer screen would make use of many components of the computer system – for example, the networking device to receive the streaming data and the video/audio components to decode the data into meaningful video and audio. Similarly, a human act of playing the violin for example would access the musical intelligence to get the correct rhythm and melody, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence to move the fingers appropriately to the music and linguistic intelligence to read the musical notes on paper.
This analogy is very simplistic because what matters is how pronounced these intelligences are in a human brain to deliver the different functions the human intends to perform. While all of us have developed every one of the seven intelligences to some extent or the other, some people develop some of these intelligences very well and some not so well. There is very little evidence today to prove that these intelligences can be transferred genetically. How well a normal human develops a particular set of intelligences depends largely on how conducive their environment has been to it’s development during their growing up years. So for example, a child may have grown up amidst a musical culture and if he/she has received the suitable quality and quantity of training, the musical intelligence and the other relevant intelligences required to master a particular type of music or an instrument would be developed appropriately in the brain so that the child would grow up to be a good musician.
After reading Dr. Gardner’s book, several questions have stuck in mind. Some among them are as follows:
As an individual, to what extent do I possess each of these intelligences? What intelligences are important for me to lead my life based on the choices that I’ve made? How do I develop those needed intelligences further so that I can be more successful in all the different roles that I play in my life?
As a parent, to what extent should I make each of these intelligences accessible to my daughter? It should definitely be based on her interests but do I know enough about her interests or about these intelligences to make a judicious decision? Should I make all these intelligences accessible in roughly similar amounts and she makes a decision later in her life on what domain she wants to pursue based on her interests? If yes, how do I make that happen?
As an advocate for children, what should be my message to adults in the lives of other children about how they could go about dealing with this myriad of possibilities, opportunities and complexities in bringing up children to be responsible and successful citizens of this world.
This book definitely raised lot more questions in my mind than it gave me answers. But I like questions. It only means that I can do what I love to do – explore more, read more and experience more so that I can find answers to my prior questions and evoke more questions in my mind.
