A Comment on Gardner's Multiple Intelligences

Howard Gardner is an educational industry. He is available on video cassette explaining his theory of multiple intelligence in a set of three videos. Nearly two dozen groups and individuals offer workshops on applying multiple intelligence theory to classroom settings, including the prestigious educational administrator organization, Phi Delta Kappa, which offers workshops to teachers throughout the country entitled "Teaching for Multiple Intelligences: Seven Ways of Knowing," through its Center for Professional Development. There is a bimonthly magazine entitled Provoking Thoughts devoted to multiple intelligence theory (MI). Also there are three newsletters on MI as well. There is even a card game with exercises in which one can develop each of one's intelligences called Provoking Thoughts Game.

Gardner has achieved God-like status among educators, being a fixture at educational conferences and a member of national reform commissions. He responded to this adulation in the pages of Phi Delta Kappan, the bible of educational administrators, by saying that he "was unprepared for the large and mostly positive reaction to the theory among educators . . . taking pleasure from--and was occasionally moved by--the many attempts to institute an MI approach to education in the schools and classrooms." (Armstrong Thomas 1994)
Moreover, Gardner is a crossover intellectual. He is easily recognized by both worlds of his own academic discipline of psychology and the literate public at large--much like his intellectual subjects in Leading Minds, Margaret Mead, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Robert Maynard Hutchins. The radical journal, Mother Jones, in its twentieth anniversary issue, selected him as one of twenty public intellectuals to comment on the future of America along with other culture heroes such as William F. Buckley, Betty Friedan, Camille Paglia, and Maya Angelou. He was the first of a half dozen intellectuals to christen the New York Times "Think Tank" series; Gardner's contribution was on intelligence testing. He debated Charles Murray on his book, The Bell Curve, on National Public Radio. Gardner is a regular contributor to educational and general intellectual publications.
Like Dewey, Gardner has been both prolific and anointed as a "genius." He has published 18 books and over 400 articles. He is chiefly known for his monumental work, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983), which caused a major paradigm shift in the thinking on what constitutes intelligence. In short, Gardner proposed that there exists seven (perhaps more) distinct intelligences, only two of which have been traditionally measured by IQ and other standardized tests. He has been labeled a genius in the popular press; "a world renowned authority on intelligence," one reporter wrote, "he is as close to a certified genius as most Americans get." He has received the "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation, the Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education, and the American Psychological Association's William James Award, among other honors. "He has become the guru of what enthusiasts regard as the most profound new idea in education," one newspaper reporter wrote, "since John Dewey espoused 'learning by doing' in the early part of the century." (Gilligan Carol 1982)

Howard Gardner had published five respected books on the relationship of art, creativity and the brain before publishing Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences in 1983. Gardner was forty at the time and had no idea that the book would have such an enormous impact. Ten years later he would reflect that he had viewed the work "principally as a contribution to my own discipline of development psychology" and that he "did not anticipate that the book would find a receptive audience in so many circles across so many lands." Gardner had become--in the words he was to use to describe Margaret Mead--"virtually a household name in literate America."

A frame of Mind is a sophisticated review of largely qualitative research and some quantitative data. Scholarship can be of two sorts; one, original data with a significant interpretation; or two, a significant reinterpretation of existing data; Frames of Mind is the latter. Gardner acknowledges that Frames of Mind is largely descriptive using case studies to exemplify his "candidate" list of seven separate intelligences and that, moreover, one can find traces of the idea of multiple intelligences in history. But his aim in the book is to "establish that 'multiple intelligences' is an idea whose time has come."

His method was to review "evidence from a large and hitherto unrelated group of sources" that included "studies of prodigies, gifted individuals, brain damaged patients, idiots savants, individuals from different cultures," and compare them to "normal children, normal adults."
From this review he had distilled seven "candidate" intelligences (there possibly could be more). He would then anchor a subsequent work, Creating Minds in a case study approach of "six men and one woman who early in this century were instrumental in formulating modern consciousness in the West . . . Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, T. S. Eliot, Martha Graham, and Mahatma Gandhi . . . [whereby each] . . . exemplifies one of the seven intelligences." (Wills Gary 1994)

Frames of Mind are a brilliant, provocative, and gracefully written book. Gardner gives a straightforward account of his theory of multiple intelligences. Instead of one general intelligence, "g"--as posited by psychometricians a century ago, he contends that there are at least seven separate intelligences, each correlating to the other, with the possibility of more to be discovered. The psychometrician's "g" became the standard interpretation partly because it was easily measurable by IQ and other related standardized tests. But Gardner forcefully argues that the IQ and other standardized tests only measure a small portion of intelligence, to wit, linguistic and logical/mathematical abilities. In "surveying the work of other scholars" on brain research and cognition, Gardner comes up with the major idea that there is more to intelligence than can be measured by the IQ and offers his theory of multiple intelligence, thus "proposing a new orientation."

The seven intelligences, in the order that Gardner presented them, are:

• Linguistic
• Musical
• Logical/mathematical
• Spatial
• Bodilykinesthetic
• Intrapersonal

The first four are selfevident. Bodily-kinesthetic relates to athletic ability whether it be as a ballet dancer or as an athlete. The latter two "personal" intelligences refer, respectively, to knowledge of oneself (perhaps the most difficult to develop) and the intelligence to deal effectively with others and the outside world. Each person has all seven intelligences in varying degrees. There are other intelligences, perhaps, and Gardner has mused that "some form of 'spiritual intelligence' may well exist." The decision to limit the search of intelligences to available research was "a deliberate one" to contain a "manageable number" useful to the practitioner.

Gardner departs from the psychometricians in another way. Whereas "g" for them is also genetically fixed, Gardner shows his indebtedness to Dewey and Piaget by positing a developmental aspect to intelligence. He believes in a genetic component, but one which can be developed by learning and practice. Frames of Mind has sections on "the development of linguistic intelligence," "the development of musical intelligence," "the development of spatial intelligence," "the development of bodily-kinesthetic intelligence" (emphasis added).
According to Gottfredson, it is a grand idea that has done much to relegate the concept of IQ to the dustbins of history. Gardner derived this insight from his work in the arts, both as practitioner and scholar, and with the brain-damaged patients he studied in the hospital. His acquaintance with great minds at Harvard has given him a further appreciation of the possibilities of mind. In reading Frames of Mind, the examples range from the genius--Da Vinci, Mozart, Einstein, and Picasso--to the idiots savants--"more than a few" who have demonstrated "unusual musical skills." (Seitz William C. 1983)

However, it is an unproven theory needing experimental verification. But as new research in brain and cognition develop, the evidence weighs in heavily on Gardner's side. Yet Gardner exercises caution by referring to his seven intelligences as "useful fictions" for both experimental verification and as a guide to educational practice. He states that "until now we have supported the fiction that adult roles depend largely on the flowering of a single intelligence." (Hirsch E. D., Jr. 1987) But Gardner warns that "the notion of multiple intelligences is hardly a proven fact." He goes on to note that "controlled experiments could either confirm or disconfirm MI" or that "one or more of the justified" or that "there are candidates that I have not considered." (Kohlberg Lawrence 1981) And in an oft-quoted statement, Gardner states that "these intelligences are fictions--at most, useful fictions--for dis- cussing processes and abilities that (like all of life) are continuous with one another." (Machiavelli Niccolo 1984)

Frames of Mind were a crossover book from the beginning. It was initially reviewed in the general press as well as in academic journals. Neither venue hailed the birth of a revolutionary idea. Most reviewers damned the book with faint praise. For example, Brody would call "Gardner's relatively errant approach still worthwhile" because the nature of intelligence "is still an open question" (emphasis added)." (Herrnstein Richard J., Charles Murray 1994)

Gardner's former mentor Jerome Bruner's assessment of Frames of Mind in the New York Review of Books was not much better. First, the editor of the Review did not consider the book of major importance, relegating it to the back pages in a joint review with three lesser, forgettable books on child development. Bruner sought to be kind to his former protégé, but when one deconstructs the essay, one senses a high level of discomfort with MI theory. Bruner cleverly uses (or misuses) Gardner's quotes to undermine him. Asking rhetorically, "How far does he succeed?", he answers: "According to his own critical evaluation (which comprises one of the best chapters in the book), only moderately well, but that is not bad for a beginning." And he concludes that "as Gardner himself says, "These intelligences . . . are at most useful fictions . . . sets of knowhow'. With this conclusion, I find myself in complete agreement." Yet he cloaks his discomfort for MI theory by calling Frames of Mind "heroic" and "in many ways a brilliant book" with an "approach . . . so far beyond the data crunching of mental testers that it deserves to be cheered."

The New York Sunday Times gave Frames of Mind a more important review, but one that was more severe than Bruner's ambivalent essay. The review was featured on the front page, a right handed full page review making it the second most important review in the issue. The reviewer, George A. Miller, a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Princeton, called MI "less a scientific theory than a line on which (Gardner) hangs out his intellectual laundry." For Miller, "the result is good reading . . . but how much of it will pass the critical test of further research is debatable." Moreover, Miller argues, "it is probable, therefore, that Mr. Gardner's catalogue of intelligences is wrong." Yet, Miller gives Gardner credit for "his attempt to integrate diverse approaches" for which he "deserves everyone's gratitude." Since a positive review in the Sunday Times Book Review translates into sales, it is a wonder that Frames of Mind was not remaindered in bookstores, much less becoming a bestseller. That it survived despite such a poor reception is a testament to the vitality of the idea.

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