An alternative vision of our schools

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I wouldn’t go so far as to call Howard Gardner a prophet, but way back in 1993, he sure predicted the chaotic politics that are roiling our public education system these days.

You’ll remember Gardner from my last column, “Upgrading the standard IQ test” (March 12-18). In “Frames of Mind: the Theory of Multiple Intelligences” (Basic Books, 1983), Gardner, one of Harvard’s most celebrated educational psychology professors, laid out seven primary intelligences that each of us, to one degree or another, possesses as part of our “genetic inheritance”: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal and interpersonal.

In 1993, Gardner released his follow-up book, “Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice,” also published by Basic Books. In it, he spelled out how schools could better foster the seven intelligences in students.

His concept of what a school should look like was a radical departure from the traditional view. In a multiple-intelligence, or MI, school, students would enjoy enormous freedom to pursue projects that excited them. Teachers would act less as pedagogues and more as guides, introducing young people to learning experiences they could not imagine on their own.

In a science classroom, for example, a teacher might set up experiment stations around a room, each one meant to test a different hypothesis that related to a central theme, such as climate change, and each one requiring that students employ a different intelligence. They would be free to roam the room, choosing experiments that interested them and played to their individual strengths.

Mornings would be reserved for classroom learning such as this. In the afternoon, students would take a field trip –– nearly every day. Gardner is particularly fond of children’s museums. To reinforce their climate-change experimentation, they might visit a science museum, university or the beach (to discuss sea-level rise).

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