True nature has many colors

Howard Gardner is one of the favorites of the education industry because of his theory put forth at the beginning of the 1990s addressing genius.  He used art in order in order to prove a point about how genius in children undergo a tapering off and many times disappearance after about age 13 or 14.  The genius in the same area of art recurs later in life in a heightened or perfected form in many of the same people that manifested the genius as a child.  This is known as the U curve.

It began as an observation, but then the idea took off.  Many other psychologists tried quantifying this U curve in art and other fields.  Particularly, psychometrists in education thought this would be worthy of exploration.  The U curve was found to be the result in many different areas, not only art.  So, a hypothesis was formulated for experimentation and observation in the field of intelligence.  Thus was born the theory of multiple intelligences.  Gardner also jumped in the pursuit of applying the U curve and its related findings to intelligence in general, not specifically for education.  His idea was outlined in the book  Frames of Mind.

The theory has had time to be tested over a couple of decades, so of course, it has attracted both praise and critique.  Educators were enamored with the idea and tried hard between 1995 and 2005 to integrate it into a larger learning theory.  But, it fell by the wayside after 2005.

Multiple Intelligence Theory (MI as it has come to be called) could help education tremendously.  Not because intelligence is the key word (since intelligence doesn't really exist), but because it would help teachers to see the true nature of knowledge.  Knowledge manifests itself everywhere and in different forms.  The discipline of learning from some of the core subjects helps in accumulating knowledge in an area a student really desires to know more about.

MI died a quick death in education, not because it couldn't be applied, but because it is antithetical to the notion of uniformity.  Schools are driven not by education but by testing.  Testing scales children's scores and causes standards to be written in cookie-cutter fashion so that curriculum for the schools can be designed for further testing.  Uniformity thrives in that environment, not MI.

MI and theories like it will endure, however, while testing for uniformity will have a shelf life.  People will not be bound by what shows on a test.  They will follow their ambitions, their paths driven by the intrinsic motivation of ideas not found in the four walls of schoolrooms, and their opportunities powered by the extrinsic incentive of prestige, money, and power.  There is so much more hope and contentment for the individual and for humanity as a whole when people are allowed to explore what is possible rather than be compelled to see only what is scorable.