Howard Gardner - Multiple Intelligences

I feel that the revelation of Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner, though it has been discussed often, is the most influential person and theory of learning.  When you sit in a classroom and look around, you can visually, right away, see how many people are different.  Now just because they look different doesn't mean they "are different," but imagine how many people would learn differently from you.  Imagine the student in class who loves music and can easily remember the lyrics and melody to a song, but cannot remember a lecture from a teacher.  Imagine the student that stares out the window and want nothing more than to experiment on the different types of fungus that grown on trees.  Everyone has different interests, personalities, and learning styles. 

 Howard Gardner was born in Scranton, PA and actually wanted to be a professional pianist.  He loved playing the piano and was very good, but he ended up teaching it instead.  Gardner is now 67 years old and  is a teacher at Harvard Grad School.  He was a piano teacher, got his Ph.D., studied with many famous psychologists and philosophers, worked at a hospital for 20 years, is co-director of Harvard Project Zero, theorized multiple intelligences, written over 400 research articles and 20 books.  WOW.  Gardner is clearly a busy man and has done many things and I find that very admirable. 



As we all know, multiple intelligences is a theory based off of students learning in different ways.  It is made up of spacial, linguistic, bodily-kinesthetic,  logical mathematical,  musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic.  Together, these intelligences help students individually identify who they are as a learner and how they are better able to learn. 
I think it would be amazing if children at a younger age could be made aware that they do learn differently and they are ways they can help themselves learn all different materials in ways that are specific to them.  I feel schools are geared toward left brain people, toward only some aspects of multiple intelligences, and that does not give students enough to help them learn in ways best for them.  I am not saying school sshould split up kids based on their highest scoring intelligence, I am saying, make them aware of their strengths to help them individually help themselves.

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