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<blockquote data-quote="Ycore Rixle" data-source="post: 1213817" data-attributes="member: 675">Indeed. This is Howard Gardener's theory of multiple intelligences. You hear about this all the time in schools (I teach, and if I'm not mistaken, Eric works in a school as well). Personally, I believe it is a misguided attack on the idea of intelligence. Gardener and his many converts mean well - they want to help kids - but I think that it is simply an Orwellian corruption of the language and an obfuscation of the main idea.Case in point: instead of calling a kid a &quot;good athlete,&quot; Gardener says the kid &quot;has a high bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.&quot; This would be laughable as an example of what Orwell was talking about in &quot;Politics and the English Language&quot; were it not for the fact that Gardener's theory has been extremely successful at stopping all rational debate on intelligence in schools.Chiefly it has stopped this debate by claiming that things like musical talent and athletic ability are &quot;intelligence.&quot; How can one speak clearly about a concept if it has many other different concepts lumped in with it? It would be like arguing about the color pink in a painting, as long as pink also meant green and blue. Impossible to think clearly with such words.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ycore Rixle, post: 1213817, member: 675"] Indeed. This is Howard Gardener's theory of multiple intelligences. You hear about this all the time in schools (I teach, and if I'm not mistaken, Eric works in a school as well). Personally, I believe it is a misguided attack on the idea of intelligence. Gardener and his many converts mean well - they want to help kids - but I think that it is simply an Orwellian corruption of the language and an obfuscation of the main idea. Case in point: instead of calling a kid a "good athlete," Gardener says the kid "has a high bodily-kinesthetic intelligence." This would be laughable as an example of what Orwell was talking about in "Politics and the English Language" were it not for the fact that Gardener's theory has been extremely successful at stopping all rational debate on intelligence in schools. Chiefly it has stopped this debate by claiming that things like musical talent and athletic ability are "intelligence." How can one speak clearly about a concept if it has many other different concepts lumped in with it? It would be like arguing about the color pink in a painting, as long as pink also meant green and blue. Impossible to think clearly with such words. [/QUOTE]

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