The Many Faces of Power Learning
By: Source: AARP.org Date Posted: 2004-02-19 18:11:00-05:00
Chances are you took the Stanford-Binet or a similar big multiple-choice test in your youth to test your brainpower. The public once widely accepted the notion of a single IQ or general intelligence, and often used such assessments to track students.
Today, such an approach seems as outdated as leaded gas, thanks to psychologist Howard Gardner. His groundbreaking 1983 book, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Basic Books, updated in 1993), argues that every human being has multiple intelligences (MI), and no two people have exactly the same combination.
"The theory caught on powerfully," says Gardner, professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "We all know intuitively that some kids learn differently than others," he explained while leaning back in the Boston Rocker he uses as a desk chair in his office in the Ed school's concrete and glass Larsen Hall.
Gardner grounds his theory in neuroscience. In studying people with strokes or other brain injuries, he discovered that a person's linguistic ability might be compromised while math competence remained intact. Exploring how human abilities are organized in the brain, he found neurological evidence of different autonomous pathways for processing information.
According to MI theory, all human beings have at least eight different intelligences, although schools mainly test the first two: logical-mathematical, linguistic, spatial-visual, interpersonal (the ability to understand others), intrapersonal (self-understanding), bodily-kinesthetic, musical, and naturalist (understanding the patterns of living phenomena).
In the past two decades, scientists and geneticists have made tremendous strides in understanding how the brain works—learning as much, Gardner argues, as we did in the previous 500 years. A steady stream of research projects has applied multiple intelligences theory to everything from preschools to college classrooms—even to the workplace. Few, though, have looked at MI and older learners.
Research from the MacArthur Foundation Study on Successful Aging published in 1998 showed that "scientific creativity peaks earliest in the most abstract disciplines," such as math and physics. As we age, information processing slows and memory for names and facts declines. Studies have shown, however, that active lifelong learning helps cognitive functions endure.
Gardner advises adults to use what they know. "If you want to increase your understanding, it makes most sense to probe deeply in a limited number of subjects," he says. It is then that the individual can best employ multiple intelligences, by approaching topics in a number of ways.
Interpersonal intelligence is especially important to the older person. "In retirement there is a new premium on meeting with others and dealing in a new milieu," he explains. "You must spend time observing. Interpersonal intelligence keeps developing as you get older."
Learning need not take place in a classroom. Playing bridge, for instance, might seem like a simple social entertainment, but Gardner points out that the game calls for mathematical ability. Plus, playing with a partner requires social skills. "It's a nice blend of intelligences: interpersonal, linguistic, and mathematical," he notes.
Gardner maintains that very few people do something completely new as they get older. "I think it's extremely difficult at 70 to activate parts of the brain that have been on hold for the past 50 years," he notes. "You're better off trying something new with your old way of doing things."
Take the case of psychologist Jerome Bruner. "He left Harvard at the age of 55 to teach in England," says Gardner. "At 65, he came back to teach at the New School in New York City. At 75, he was forced to retire. Then he got a job teaching at New York University Law School. A psychologist teaching at a law school? It sounds amazing—until you think about law as narrative, and the fact that he was teaching things he knew about."
The GoodWork Project (617-496-4929), Gardner's latest endeavor with the Claremont Graduate University's Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Stanford's William Damon, looks at how "to combine the expert and ethical on an institutional and individual level." Their goal is to enable people to combine quality work with social responsibility. At the heart of the project is the Four M test: What is the mission of your work? Who are your mentors (who do you look up to-or down on-and why)? Finally, there is the two-sided mirror test: Do you look in the mirror and feel proud of what you do? Do you look out to see your work domain reflecting your values?
Although Gardner and his colleagues have surveyed journalists and geneticists so far, the Four M test is applicable to anyone, from gardeners to educators. Teachers, especially, face the conflict of wanting to reach each child, while contending with growing demands to prepare students for standardized tests. That conflict, says Gardner, leads some public school teachers to move on to charter or independent schools.
In recent years, Gardner has explored the possibility of an existential intelligence—of "big questions." It is in this area that Gardner believes that older people may have an edge. "You can go through a lot of life sidestepping these issues," he observes. "As you get older, you want to make sense of your life. What are the sorts of things I wish I had done?"
It is never too late to make a contribution. The best older people become what Gardner calls trustees. "They worry about things that are much broader," he says. "It doesn't work unless you use what you know very well." For instance, someone who spent her career as an accountant might champion reforms to help the now disgraced industry regain public trust. Gardner himself admits, "I've never solicited students, but now I spend more time with those who are going to continue the work in which I believe."
"In his later years, Freud is reputed to have written this pithy thing that he couldn't have written at 30," smiles Gardner. "He wrote, 'When I was young, ideas came to me. Now as I get older, I go halfway to meet them.'" Meeting halfway is a good way to keep learning and growing.
From NRTA's Live and Learn.
Ellie McGrath is a former education editor for Time Magazine.
Related Information
Read the book review of Multiple Intelligences and Adult Literacy.
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