| Howard Gardner, a professor at Harvard and an author of Frames of Mind and other books on multiple intelligences, says that everybody has multiple intelligences. All people vary in the amounts that they posses. With additional work, these intelligences can be strengthened or if neglected they will diminish. This was very controversial to the traditional idea that people are born with a fixed amount of intelligence (Workshop Month 1: Tapping into). These intelligences cover a wide variety of skills, previously over looked in intelligence test. These intelligences are broken down in nine ways, verbal-linguistic, mathematical-logical, musical, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist, and existential. Each |
| Gardner and Multiple Intelligences |
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| category spans a variety of skills that define a person's strengths and weaknesses. Gardener first came up with these classifications in 1983 with his first book describing these intelligences, Frames of Mind. In 1999 Gardner publishes Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligence for the 21st Century in which he reports on the evolution of and revisions to the theory of multiple intelligences (Workshop |
| Month 1: Tapping into). To form these theories Gardner performed interviews with and brain research on hundreds of people, including stroke victims, prodigies, autistic individuals, and so-called idiot savants (Workshop Month 1: Tapping into). These theories are fuel to the fire of advocates against standardized tests such as the IQ test. These people believe that the standardized tests are not accurate reflections of a person's mental capacity and cause people to be labeled. Since Frames of Mind in 1983, Gardner has become very popular in the teaching professions serving as a consultant on multiple intelligences. Gardner's oppositions claim that the theories are nothing new to educators and psychologist, and that these intelligences are just talents and attributes of people rather then mental aptitude.� |