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The first pillar of modern education has to do with how we view 'intelligence.'

The discovery of what we now call intelligence was made early in the Twentieth

Century. Over time, research led to the development of IQ (Intelligence Quotient)

tests that distilled an individuals mental abilities down to a single number. Score

132 on the Stanford-Binet IQ Test, for example, and you qualify for Mensa.

In the last several decades, the classical view of a singular, psychometric measure

of intelligence has been challenged on a number of fronts. The leading theory

challenging that view came from Dr. Howard Gardner of Harvard.

A developmental psychologist, Gardner worked in the fields of neurology and

neuropsychology to better understand how the brain works how we think,

reason and remember. He studied both normal children and adults, as well as

gifted individuals. Included in the gifted category were savants, who exhibit an

exceptional skill or brilliance in a narrow, limited field (such as music ormathematics) while being affected with a mental disability (think Rain Man).

In 1983, Gardner published his seminal book, Frames of Mind, in which he

proposed his Theory of Multiple Intelligences. This theory suggests that the

overall intelligence of an individual is actually a combination of a number of

independent abilities, or intelligences. As originally conceived, Gardner identified

seven intelligences that most humans have to varying degrees; in 1997, he added

an eighth intelligence (Naturalistic).

You can interactively explore Gardner's Multiple Intelligences on the next page.

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However, in our modern, paper-based education system, all intelligences are not created equal. In order to prepare the authors

knowledge for the paper-page of a textbook, that knowledge had to be encoded into words . . . and only one of Gardners

intelligences (Verbal-Linguistic intelligence) is predisposed to being adept at learning via words.

If you have a low Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence, Musical intelligence, or Naturalistic intelligence, you can nonetheless thrive in a

paper-based educational system as long as you have a high Verbal-Linguistic intelligence.

But if, rather than have two left feet, you have a low Verbal-Linguistic intelligence, it can negatively impact your entire

education. You simply are not tuned to the primary and dominant knowledge transmission medium (i.e. words on paper, or the

spoken words of a teacher).

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As but one perspective on the scope of the challenge to our educational system, take the following data collected by faculty of

Valencia Community College in Florida. Ninety students in their online criminal justice and speech courses were tested, and the

results are depicted on the right.

Two things stand out from this

data.

First, notice the very large

percentage of students who

scored high on the Intrapersonal

scale. This makes sense when you

consider that the students were

all taking an online course and

those with high Intrapersonal

intelligence like working alone

and learn best throughindependent study.

Second, notice that, of all the

intelligences, Verbal-Linguistic

intelligence had the lowest

percent scoring high. Only one in

five were predisposed to learn via words, while two in five scored low on the Verbal-Linguistic scale.

Ironically, it is easy to imagine that, soon after taking the Multiple Intelligence test, the 36 students who scored low on the

Verbal-Linguistic scale went back to their coursework reading.

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The second pillar of modern education has to do with how

educators look at cognitive development.

In the early 1950s, Benjamin Bloom (Ph.D. in Education) and his

team at the University of Chicago developed a high-level

classification of learning objectives for students. This

classification is known today as Blooms Taxonomy.

Bloom divided educational objectives into three domains:

Affective, Psychomotor, and the one were concerned with

here the Cognitive Domain.

Within the Cognitive Domain, Bloom identified six levels of

thinking skills. While 'remembering' is a very complex process,

In Bloom's Taxonomy, it is the lowest, entry level skill.

Soccer provides a useful analogy.

When considering the ball handling skills of a soccer player, the

first thing a player has to be able to do is to trap the ball. Once

the player has the ball, s/he has to be able to dribble, pass, and

shoot the ball.

When learning something new, the first thing a student has to

do is trap the knowledge. Coming up from the page, the

knowledge has to pass through what is known as working memory, where the text is decoded and sent off to long-term

memory. Knowledge known.

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Once the student has the

knowledge (remembers it), s/he

has to be able to understand the

knowledge, apply it, analyze it,

evaluate it, and synthesize it . . .

each is an essential cognitive skillthat any good player thinker

should possess and should practice

regularly.

And just as a soccer player cant

shoot the ball if s/he cant trap the

ball, a student will have a very

difficult time developing his/her

higher order thinking skills if s/hestruggles simply learning.

You can interactively explore

Bloom's Taxonomy on the right.

Now, all those indications that our

education system is failing, all the

test scores that chronicle the dire

circumstance we find ourselves

in . . . they all overwhelminglymeasure memory; and short-term

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