Howard Gardner and Multiple Intelligences

The second major theoretical foundation of modern unschooling is Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. The article works through Gardner’s contribution: his account of three kinds of learners, his seven intelligences, and the case for unschooling that follows from the theory.

Gardner and the unschooling movement

Howard Gardner, born in 1943, is an American developmental psychologist whose work has provided much of the modern theoretical foundation for unschooling. He is famous for his Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which the article works through in detail.

Gardner himself does not proclaim to be a die-hard unschooler. He has worked within the conventional academic and educational establishment throughout his career; he is a Harvard professor and his work has been published through mainstream academic channels. He is not a polemicist against schools in Holt’s mode. But his theory of multiple intelligences suggests that schools, as currently structured, are unable to cater to the individual needs of children. The implication is one unschoolers have eagerly adopted.

Gardner’s book How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach is an open criticism of schools, adding more evidence to the unschooling position. The book documents in detail what goes wrong in schools and what could go right. Together with Holt’s work, Gardner’s research has given the unschooling movement a theoretical foundation that purely polemical critiques of schools could not provide.

Early-age learning and the unschooled mind

A central observation Gardner makes about the development of young children is striking. During the first years of life, youngsters all over the world master a breathtaking array of competences with little formal tutelage. The list is long: language, social interaction, basic physics, intuitive psychology, motor coordination, emotional regulation, and many others. The mastery happens with little help from adults and without any formal instruction in the modern sense.

Children develop powerful theories of how the world works and how their own minds work. These theories are not just collections of facts; they are integrated models that predict and explain. A four-year-old’s theory of how other people think (their theory of mind in the modern technical sense) is sophisticated enough to support complex social behaviour, deception, and cooperation. The theory was constructed by the child, mostly without adult instruction.

The striking phenomenon Gardner identifies is what happens when these same children arrive at school. The same children who develop complex theories of the universe or intricate theories of the mind often experience the greatest difficulties upon their entry into school. The transition from pre-school intuitive learning to scholastic learning is jarring; many children handle it poorly.

The research evidence Gardner cites is also striking. Studies show that even well-trained and academically successful students often do not display an adequate understanding of the materials and concepts they have been working with. The students can produce the standard performances (answer test questions, write essays in the expected forms) without having developed the genuine understanding the standard performance was supposed to reflect. The school has taught them to produce performance without producing the underlying knowledge.

Gardner’s diagnosis is that the nature of the scholastic method of teaching fails to develop a concrete understanding in the minds of the students. The teaching method itself, not just particular schools or teachers, is the source of the failure. Schools teach in ways that do not produce the kind of understanding that survives outside the classroom.

The most striking phrase Gardner uses for this is the unschooled mind. In nearly every older student who has gone through the rigorous schooling experience, he writes, there is a five-year-old unschooled mind struggling to get out and express itself. The five-year-old’s intuitive understanding of the world, the one developed through pre-school natural learning, persists underneath the layers of scholastic content the school has added. When the student is taken out of the school context and asked to explain things in their own terms, the five-year-old’s understanding often comes through rather than the school’s content. The schooling has been a surface layer that has not transformed the underlying intuitive mind.

Gardner argues that it is an extremely difficult and challenging task to transition children’s beliefs into reality (the more accurate adult versions); this is what schools often fail at. The failure is not for lack of effort; it is structural to how schools teach.

Flashcard

What does Gardner mean by *the unschooled mind*?

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Answer

The five-year-old’s intuitive understanding of the world that persists underneath the school’s surface layer of content

In nearly every older student who has gone through rigorous schooling, there is a five-year-old unschooled mind struggling to get out. The five-year-old’s understanding, developed through pre-school natural learning, persists. When the student is taken out of school context and asked to explain things in their own terms, the five-year-old’s understanding often comes through rather than the school’s content. The schooling has been a surface layer that has not transformed the underlying intuitive mind.

Three kinds of learners

Gardner identifies three kinds of learners in his observations. The three correspond to different developmental stages and to different relationships to formal education.

The intuitive learner is the natural learner, the naïve learner, the universal learner. The young child is the paradigm case: superbly equipped to learn language and other symbolic systems, and evolving serviceable theories of the physical world and of the world of other people during the opening years of life. The intuitive learner does not need formal instruction to develop substantial competences; the learning happens through engagement with the environment.

The scholastic learner is the traditional learner, the youngster from about age seven to age twenty, who seeks to master the literacies, concepts, and disciplinary forms of the school. The scholastic learner is what conventional schooling produces. They work within the school’s structures, learn what the school teaches in the way the school teaches it, and produce the standard performances the school requires.

A key observation Gardner makes about scholastic learners: it is these students who, whether or not they can produce standard performances, respond in ways similar to preschool or primary school youngsters once they have been removed from the context of the classroom. The school’s content does not transfer beyond the classroom. The student who can write a perfect essay about photosynthesis in school cannot explain why plants are green to a friend at home. The scholastic learning is context-dependent in a way that real understanding is not.

The skilled learner is the disciplinary expert: an individual of any age who has mastered the concepts and skills of a discipline or domain and can apply such knowledge appropriately in new situations. Included in the ranks of the disciplinary experts are those students who are able to use the knowledge of their physics class or their history class to illuminate new phenomena. Their knowledge is not limited to the usual text-and-test setting; they are eligible to enter the ranks of those who really understand.

The progression from intuitive to scholastic to skilled is what schools should ideally produce. In practice, on Gardner’s diagnosis, schools mostly produce scholastic learners who never reach the skilled stage. The five-year-old intuitive learner becomes a scholastic learner who can perform in school but does not really understand; the transition to skilled learner requires something the school does not provide.

The unschooling alternative tries to keep the intuitive learner alive longer and provide opportunities for the transition directly to skilled learner, bypassing the scholastic stage that on Gardner’s analysis often produces shallow understanding rather than the deep kind.

Flashcard

What three kinds of learners does Gardner identify?

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Answer

Intuitive (young child, natural learner), scholastic (school-age, traditional learner), skilled (disciplinary expert, real understanding)

Intuitive learner: the young child who learns language and other symbolic systems naturally, evolving serviceable theories of the world during the opening years of life. Scholastic learner: age 7-20, who seeks to master the literacies, concepts, and disciplinary forms of school; performance is often context-dependent. Skilled learner: any age, has mastered concepts and skills of a discipline and can apply them to new situations; knowledge is not limited to text-and-test. Schools mostly produce scholastic learners who never reach the skilled stage.

The seven intelligences

Gardner’s most famous contribution is the theory of multiple intelligences. He found the general notions of intelligence and cognition held by most investigators to be unduly restrictive. Most traditional philosophers held the view that human cognition is basically unitary and that individuals can be adequately described and evaluated along a single dimension called intelligence. The traditional IQ tests reflect this view; they produce a single number meant to represent the person’s overall cognitive capacity.

Gardner’s research led him to reject this unitary view. According to his research, all human beings develop at least seven forms of intelligence to a greater or lesser extent. The seven are:

1. Linguistic: capacity with language, including speaking, writing, reading, and understanding.
2. Logical-mathematical: capacity for logical reasoning and mathematical thinking.
3. Spatial: capacity for visualising and manipulating spatial relationships.
4. Musical: capacity for understanding and producing music.
5. Bodily-kinesthetic: capacity for skilled physical movement and use of the body.
6. Interpersonal: capacity for understanding and interacting with other people.
7. Intrapersonal: capacity for understanding oneself.

The seven intelligences are relatively independent of one another. A person who scores high on one may score low on another. The traditional IQ test, which mostly measures linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences, misses the other five entirely. A child whose strength is in musical or bodily-kinesthetic intelligence may score low on a standard IQ test but be highly competent in their actual area of strength.

It is based on the presence of portions of these intelligences in an individual that decides what kind of learner that individual would become. A person strong in linguistic intelligence becomes a different kind of learner from one strong in spatial intelligence; they engage with material in different ways, prefer different kinds of presentation, and develop different kinds of understanding.

A modern note: the multiple intelligences theory has been controversial in psychology. The empirical support for seven separate independent intelligences has been contested by other researchers, and the strongest version of Gardner’s theory is not widely accepted in modern psychology. The weaker version (that there are multiple cognitive capacities that vary somewhat independently across people) has broader support. The popular educational version of the theory often goes beyond what the empirical evidence supports, and a modern educator should know the difference.

Flashcard

What are the seven intelligences in Gardner's theory?

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Answer

Linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal

The seven are relatively independent: a person high on one may be low on another. Traditional IQ tests measure mostly linguistic and logical-mathematical, missing the other five entirely. A child whose strength is musical or bodily-kinesthetic may score low on IQ but be highly competent in their area. The strongest version of the theory has been contested in modern psychology; the weaker version (multiple cognitive capacities varying somewhat independently) has broader support. The popular educational version often goes beyond the empirical evidence.

Multiple intelligences and unschooling

Gardner asserts that his theory of multiple intelligences should empower learners, not restrict them to one manner of learning. The theory is not a new way of labelling children; it is a recognition that children differ in their cognitive strengths and that education should respond to the differences.

The observational research supports the claim that all humans possess some measure of these seven intelligences. Each human being is unique in possessing the varying amounts. Each combines and uses these intelligences in different ways, producing different personalities and behaviours. The variation is the rule, not the exception.

Gardner uses this research to criticise the emphasis of most traditional schools. Most schools focus on a certain combination of linguistic and logical intelligences. The two intelligences the schools emphasise are not unimportant; they matter substantially for many adult roles. But schools that emphasise these two while ignoring or minimising the other five fail many children. By ignoring or minimising the importance of the other intelligences both within and outside of schools, schools assign the label of stupidity to many children who fail in the traditional manner. The label is unwarranted; the children are not stupid, they are simply strong in intelligences the school does not value.

The case Gardner makes is that an education built on multiple intelligences can be more effective than one built on just two. Schools that recognise all seven intelligences and provide opportunities for each can engage children whose strengths are in any of them, not just the two the traditional school happens to value.

The connection to unschooling is direct. With unschooling, children are not expected to have the same sort of intelligence. They can be taught in accordance with their unique combination. The unschooling family can match the educational approach to the particular child’s strengths in a way that a conventional class cannot. The child strong in bodily-kinesthetic intelligence can spend time on physical activities that develop their strength; the child strong in musical intelligence can spend time on music; the child strong in interpersonal intelligence can spend time on social activities and projects.

The matching of activities to strengths produces deeper learning across more dimensions of the child’s development than the conventional school’s narrow focus on linguistic and logical-mathematical. The unschooling approach, on this analysis, is not just a refusal of conventional schooling; it is a more comprehensive educational approach than schools provide.

Flashcard

How does Gardner's multiple-intelligences theory support unschooling?

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Answer

Schools emphasise only linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences, missing the other five; unschooling can match the educational approach to each child’s unique combination

Most traditional schools focus on a certain combination of linguistic and logical intelligences. By ignoring or minimising the other intelligences, schools assign children who fail in the traditional manner the label of stupidity. The label is unwarranted; the children are strong in intelligences the school does not value. With unschooling, children are not expected to have the same sort of intelligence; they can be taught in accordance with their unique combination. The unschooling approach engages more dimensions of the child’s development than the conventional school’s narrow focus.