Anyway, my opinion of the eight intelligences is that it does force the student to look at the ways people can learn. The eight intelligences were not used for actual course instruction (it was essentially a lecture/socratic method), but for a course we called 'Culture,' hence why the founding corporation was called 'Connections Between Cultures.' Every week, and at higher levels every two week, the students would have to pick a topic of cultural, social or historic significance and prepare a speech and presentation over the topic. They had to use at least four of the intelligences in their presentation, or risk failure.
The problem I've found is that even if this is what you've taken from Gardner's MI, it doesn't reflect the literature or how a lot of pedagogues have interpreted it. Many schools I've dealt with in my time have explicitly included curriculum references to Gardner's MI. I remember arguing this same point back when I first got into education a number of years ago - it's a 'nice idea' that simply isn't supported by anything more than warm feelings and post-modernist educational wishful thinking.
The problem is that MI oversimplifies the issue of epistemological development and the process of adopting new skills and knowledge. Communicating to teachers that you need to structure your lesson to include multiple forms of media is one thing (and a good thing at that), and vital for good learning practices. There is plenty of evidence demonstrating the efficacy of teaching the same thing using different media and teaching tools. Yet that is not the same as Gardner's MI, I'm afraid.
You know, the distinguished prof has a few good points but he doesn't offer any research, either. It is true that very little research has been done on the subject but Ferguson makes just as spurious of claims as he's trying to put to rest.
I can't see where he does more than offer opinion. I could accuse you of the very same, if not for the fact I'm aware that you're also writing an opinion. You'd be free to disagree based on your own experiences, of course, but based on my own experience he's hit the nail on the head. Outside of that, he's stating that the MI claims are without evidence - not a novel point by any stretch of the imagination.
Nobody ever claimed that that every child is some sort of "secret genius" (straw man) or that we should laud little Johnny because he "dances well" but is poor at math (though we have no problem lauding athletes who have "football/baseball/hockey smarts" but haven't read a book since 5th grade - Ferguson has a nice apologetic for this).
You've never come across this? Seriously? Can I ask how many schools you've had experience with in your career?
Unless you're playing word games, it's not difficult to find evidence of MI being interpreted to claim that every child is indeed 'smart in their own way' or has an 'inner genius'. Whether it's worded as '
Multiple intelligences are a set of different ways to look at how children (and all people) are smart and skillful' or explicitly '
every child is a genius', finding people who interpret MI just as the author describes is not all that hard.
What we should give is opportunity to explore all the ways in which humans can achieve, not just those that are apparently the most economically lucrative. There is more to life than work and economic development and more ways to experience humanity than to be a mathematician or an engineer. Once again, nobody is saying that we should let kids explore their abilities in "dance or socializing" to the detriment of learning algebra and reading.
I'm not sure we read the same article, then. The author was addressing the fact that MI is often used - without evidence - to claim that there are many different forms of 'intelligence'. It simply doesn't seem to be so. He's not claiming that students should be forsaken their right to explore different skills or interests - just that it is nonsense that all such skills are forms of intelligence.
This guy is full of straw men.
Oh, there is a straw man in the room. No doubt about it.
What people are talking about is a balanced curriculum and the evidence that gets cited about our rankings in subjects is likely skewed and irrelevant.
While true, I'm not sure what that has to do with MI. If you're claiming that people commonly use MI as some sort of metaphor for balancing a curriculum with a range of skills, I think you're being quite selective. I'm not arguing that there aren't teachers who do give a rather dismissive nod to Gardner's MI as shorthand for differentiation or use of diverse learning tools. But that is not what MI itself is claiming, and there are plenty of people in the field - in Australia, the US and the UK (the three educational cultures I'm most familiar with...I can't comment on others unfortunately) - who readily refer to Gardner's MI in claiming that everybody is 'smart in their own way'.
I can understand the alarm over underperforming schools and kids who know next to nothing but let's get real: success in school is predicated largely on a child's home life and socio-economic status. No school can outperform the kids who come completely unprepared to learn, period.
You seem to be having two different rants here. I can sympathise completely with your view (I'm assuming US here) of the impact of home background on education. There is plenty of research to back you up on that. But I seem to have missed your segue from the article's short-fallings to that.
Athon
It smacks of placebo education - so long as the idea seems to do good things, it should be left alone.
