DO HOWARD GARDNERS MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES ….docVIP

Illusory Intelligences? John White The theory of multiple intelligences has been influential in school reform across the world. In England, for instance, it is widely used to back the idea that pupils have preferred ‘learning styles’: some make better progress if they can involve their musical or interpersonal or other strengths in their learning than if they have to be dependent on language ability alone. But does MI theory hold water? Everything turns on the claim that there are a few relatively discrete intelligences: linguistic, musical, logico-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinaesthetic, intrapersonal and interpersonal, to which have now been added naturalist and possibly existential intelligences. One reason for the popularity of MI theory is its rejection of the unitary general intelligence associated with IQ testing. Children who have been seen, or have seen themselves, as dim are recognized to have other strengths. This is an important thought. But it could be true and MI theory false. Long ago Gilbert Ryle (1949:48) reminded us that ‘the boxer, the surgeon, the poet and the salesman’ engage in their own kinds of intelligent operation, applying ‘their special criteria to the performance of their special tasks’. On his view, intelligent action has to do with flexible adaptation of means in pursuit of one’s goals. This means that there are as many types of human intelligence as there are types of human goal. Gardner has corralled this variousness into a small number of categories. Is this justified? Everything turns on how the intelligences are identified. The basic text here is Gardner 1983, ch 4. He writes First of all, what are the prerequisites for an intelligence: that is, what are the general desiderata to which a set of intellectual skills ought to conform before that set is worth consideration in the master list of intellectual competences? Second, what are the actual criteria by which we can judge whether a candidate competence, which has passed t