Everyone has heard of the “right side of your brain versus the left side” spiel, but what about the Theory of Multiple Intelligences? No, not as much?
The Theory of Multiple Intelligences was proposed by Howard Gardner and explains how each student possesses multiple and unique mindsets. There’s seven in total and are: visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, and logical-mathematical. However, the current education system in the United States expects students to learn and perform using only the linguistic and logic mindsets. So what happens if you only have one of those, or none? Are you already dead in the water by not being born without these required mindsets?
Perdita Samuel-Lopez and Angelo Cassiano, both co-founders of the club Meeting of the Minds, see how creative thinkers are getting the short end of the stick.
“I definitely think that, considering that school is solely focused on academics, they don’t give as much importance to the creative side,” Samuel-Lopez stated, “I think to be creative, it takes a lot more work than it does to perform a skill you can memorize.”
Cassiano sees how this bias can affect one’s future education, saying that,”If you’re trying to get a full education, it should be for all equally”.
Both have agreed that to solve a problem as big as this, it would boil down to how the teachers handled the students and their specific intelligences.
“I think that some teachers could incorporate more creativity-based thinking in things like math,” Samuel-Lopez mentioned. She believes that giving students creative freedom in academically based projects can let students with different intelligences shine. “Give them a barrier, but let them have the freedom to express how they want to complete it,” she concluded.
Instead of having the lessons change in a broad manner, Cassiano believes that teaching styles should vary for each individual student and what classes they take. Having an, “academic class with a creative teacher, or a creative class with an academic teacher,” would aid the different thinkers. He also suggested that students would be able to know what teaching style each teacher has when signing up for classes to suit what works best for them. That way, all of the mindsets are supported in the student’s learning experience.
Of course, there are teachers that have embraced this style of thinking at Steinbrenner, giving students personality tests and individualizing some of their lesson plans in order to cater to strengths of the students they teach. Unfortunately, there are still a good amount of teachers all across the country that don’t embrace this research.
To all the creative kids who doodle on the sides of their math homework, more power to you. You’re not dumb for not knowing the Quadratic Formula off the top of your head, you just think differently than others, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Hannah Makholm // Graphics Dept.
