I have often struggled with the work of Howard Gardner and The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. I sensed something amiss but I thought: “What’s not to like?” Each of us does have a blend of different intelligences. He rails against the stupidity of IQ tests and their brethren. Gardner even went as far as to point out that to dramatically emphasize verbal-linguistic skills and logical-mathematical skills at the expense of music, art, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal skills is cultural genocide. And living at the cutting edge I wanted to use Gardner’s Harvard pedigree to substantiate progressive education.
My primary locus for research is fieldwork. I used Multiple Intelligences in two ways. As the director of a small charter school I instituted several ways to apply the theory including learning stations, integrated curricula, and extensive teacher training. In whole family experiential learning programs we at Summa used a Multiple Intelligence analysis as part of our assessment in order to customize the program and optimize family well-being. I also referred to it positively in my book, Optimal Parenting.
But something always bothered me. I knew Gardner was a logical positivist and therefore of the old paradigm. But so were Piaget and others and I know there is much to preserve there. And that was my confusion. As I turned my attention to the comparison between the old and new paradigm I realized that Piaget’s work, like Natural Learning Relationships, is an epistemology. Gardner’s work is a theory.
The Fallacy
Then, due to the invitation from Paul Freedman, Josette and I met Kirsten Olson and her husband Richard Ellmore as we were guests and speakers at the Salmonberry School on Orcas Island. Kirsten’s delightfully frank comments on her experience and as a student and colleague of Gardner, and particularly the social uselessness of The Theory, catalyzed my understanding. Gardner is an interpreter, a statistician, a theorizer based on select data and spun into a thoughtful web.
But he knows nothing of epistemology. He knows nothing of how children know themselves and their world. Theorists crunch data (often with little concern for the biases of the person doing the crunching) and then superimpose their results on existing conditions.
Piaget called his work genetic epistemology. Though he used a logical positivist framework, he also often cited his experiences with children as validation. Unfortunately, due to the reductionist framework he failed to adequately address the social and emotional life of the child. He also ignored what Maslow called The Farther Reaches of Human Nature and the work of Jung and transpersonal psychologists.
Natural Learning Relationships, an ontological epistemology, includes all of these critical human qualities—spiritual, aesthetic, social, emotional, cognitive, and physical.
The Negative Consequences of The Theory
Multiple Intelligences is a theory and includes none of these qualities, not even those pioneered by Piaget. It does not account for social influences that draw forth certain intelligences while suppressing others. It says nothing about relationship between adult and student. Gardner does not take the time to attempt to correlate child development with the various intelligences.
Here’s the irony. While redressing inequities about the way society perceives intelligence, Gardner has created new and possibly more damaging inequities in the way children are known. Most telling, relationship and curriculum is still top-down, only now adults have The Theory as a new justification for their agenda. Appreciation of the critical organizing principles of the developmental stages of childhood including Rightful Place, Trust, Autonomy and Interconnectedness, which Gardner fails to do, cripples the value of his work.
Kirsten talks inspirationally about how school wounds children. I add theories unexamined in the light of the whole child.
Abandon the old paradigm. It hurts, wounds, and leads to boatloads of unnecessary suffering.
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