The Commonsense Guide to Self Improvement and Motivation

Featured Article

 by: Royane Real

Imagine for a moment that you lived in a world where only people who were very skilled at musical ability were considered to be valuable. And in this world, only those people who were musically talented were considered to be intelligent. Everyone who didn’t have musical ability was considered to be slow-witted and intellectually inferior.

In this imaginary world, only those people who were the greatest singers, composers, and instrumentalists could run for the office of president, or enter the upper levels of any corporation.

In a world like that, would you be one of the people who would easily succeed? Or would you be shut out of all the best opportunities?

If you had grown up in such a world, would you consider yourself to be intelligent? Would other people think you weren’t very bright because you couldn’t carry a tune?

If you happened to be very good at reading and mathematics in a world where only musical ability was regarded as valuable, would you decide that these other abilities you possess weren’t important?

Do you think it would be fair that other people decided whether or not you were smart based only on this very narrow definition of intelligence?

What if you lived in a world where only athletic ability counted? Or a world where only artistic ability was respected?

You can easily see by these examples that deciding to value musical ability only, while disregarding other forms of intelligence, would be very unfair and quite unrealistic. And the same would be true if we decided that only artistic ability, or only athletic ability mattered.

Yet in a way, something similar does happen in the world we live in. In our world, and particulary in our schools, people tend to value one particular type of intelligence very highly, and they often regard other forms of intelligence as less valuable.

If you happen to be talented at reading, logic and mathematics, you likely did very well in school. You were probably be regarded as very intelligent by your teachers and your peers, and you grew up confident about your intelligence and your ability to succeed.

That is because in our current world, an aptitude for reading, logic and mathematics has been defined as synonymous with intelligence. When you take an IQ (intelligence quotient) test, this narrow range of abilities is what is measured, and then the score is said to be a measure of your intelligence.

So if you happen to do poorly at logic and language because your skills are elsewhere, these tests and our school systems may label you as someone who is not very intelligent.

Standard intelligence tests focus a lot on exploring and measuring a person’s ability to understand logic, language and mathematics. But is that really the same as intelligence? Or is intelligence something broader than that?

Is there more than one kind of intelligence? How should we define intelligence? Can we really measure it? What is intelligence, really?

Several experts in the field of intelligence have proposed that we need to broaden our understanding of what intelligence really is, and the role it plays in successful living. If we define intelligence primarily as an aptitude for mathematical and linguistic/logical thinking, we may be missing other forms of intelligence that are also important.

A Harvard professor named Dr. Howard Gardner has spent many years studying the topic of intelligence in human beings. As a result of his studies, Dr. Gardner has proposed that our current beliefs about intelligence should be revised and expanded.

Dr. Gardner has suggested we consider at least seven different forms of intelligence.

These are:

• verbal-linguistic

• logical-mathematical

• visual-spatial

• musical

• bodily-kinesthetic

• social-interpersonal

• intra-personal.