Focus 580; Music in the Family of Human Intelligence

We're broadcasting from Campbell Hall for Public Telecommunications the home of W I L L AM FM and TV made possible by a gift from Alice and Robert Campbell. Good morning this is Focus 580. It's our telephone talk program our morning talk program I should say. My name is Jack bright and glad you could listen today during this hour focused 580. We'll talk about our notions of human intelligence and how those notions relate to the challenges of education. Our guest for this hour is Howard Gardner a Harvard scholar whose research on developmental psychology points to a more complex model of human intelligence than the model prevailing in our educational system. Dr. Gordon Dr. Gardner is well known for his theory of multiple intelligences which challenges the notion that there exists only one kind of intelligence that can be measured. For example with standard IQ tests rather he says each person has a set of intellectual abilities that can work individually or in concert with their other faculties. Among the intelligences Dr. Gardner has identified is one he has termed musical intelligence and he will be speaking on that subject during an upcoming conference on the campus of the University of Illinois. The

conference will be held next week specifically June 3rd through the 5th at the School of Music on the Ur bannock campus of the University of Illinois. It is organized by the US College of Fine Arts in applied. Fine and applied arts that is the College of Fine applied arts and the school of musics division of music education and council for research to give them due credit and will be presented to commemorate the contributions of the late Marilyn Zimmerman to the field of music music education. Dr. Zimmerman was a member of the music education faculty from one hundred forty nine thousand ninety five and was very much involved with these issues. The keynote address at that conference will feature our guest Howard Gardner and will take place next Thursday June 3rd at 7 p.m. at the Smith Music Hall and that is free and open to the public so if you'd like to attend you should feel free to do so for the keynote address Dr. Gardner will talk about music in the family of human intelligence and during this hour we'll talk with Howard Gardner about that and about the theory of multiple intelligences and what it means for improving the way we do education

as we talk with Howard Gardner You are invited into the conversation. Questions are welcome. All we ask is you try to stay on our topic and accommodate as many people as possible so we'll try to keep the show moving. You can call us around Champaign-Urbana at 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Anywhere else you can hear us 800. 2 2 2 9 4 5 5 any time during our conversation. Let me tell you a bit more about our guest Howard Gardner is the John H and Elizabeth Hobbs professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He also holds positions as adjunct professor of psychology at Harvard University adjunct professor of neurology at the Boston University School of Medicine and he's also co-director of the Harvard Project Zero. Dr. Gardner is the author of 18 books including his 1983 book frames of mind in which he introduced the theory of multiple intelligences. His latest book just published by Simon Schuster is the disciplined mind what all students should understand. And it explores a wide range of issues involved in education

and school reform. Before we use it the rest of the hour with this introduction let's say hello to our guest Dr. Gardner Good morning. Hello Dr. Gardner. I Good morning. I still hear you. Yeah well thanks very much for spending the time with us. Right. To begin with a sort of hinted at the meaning of your theory of multiple intelligences but could you give us a fuller explanation. It's helpful to contrast my theory with the standard view of intelligence which has been with us for almost a century and that is intelligence the single capacity or trait that people have. We have it in greater or lesser amounts. There isn't much about you can do to change your intelligence so to speak it's in your genes. And then psychologists can tell you how smart you are by giving you a test. Here's a paper and pencil kinds of tests. And even though the people have been hacking at this theory for a long time that seems to be very robust and most people still hold on to it a book called The Bell Curve a few years ago it was kind of a celebration of the standard view.

But about 20 25 years ago based on my own research about the brain and lots of studies that I reviewed from a range of fields including psychology and anthropology and neurology I came the conclusion that the theory was what scientifically. Misleading inadequate and to put it bluntly wrong. And what I believe and I've tried to collect a lot of evidence in support of this belief is the human mind the human brain are better thought of as a number of relatively independent faculties or capacities which I decide to call intelligences Initially I thought they were seven now I think there are eight or nine and there's is no absolute limit on how many intelligences there are. I have a set of criteria drawn from different disciplines which allows me I believe to discriminate between something which ought to be kind of called intelligence and something which ought not to be. Anyway that's that's the background and I guess I owe you a list of what intelligence is on Earth. Well might be might be useful to talk about it legally sold to give some examples.

Right. Well usually when we use the word intelligence we were talking about what it means to do well in school and in most societies school rely very heavily on two intelligences linguistic intelligence and logical mathematical intelligence. And I have no problem with the importance of these intelligences and you're very lucky if you have good linguistic and good logical mathematical intelligence because as long as you stay in school people will think you're smart if you ever walk on the street you discover there are other intelligences which are important as well and the ones that I've been Ooh weighted so far are musical intelligence which is the subject of. Conference next week at U of I. Spatial intelligence which is the capacity to form mental representations of wide space the kind that you need if you're a pilot or a navigator. Anybody also has to see the big picture but also aspect to spatial intelligence a much more local intelligence of a chess player or a surgeon or a sculptor. People who work with the space right in front of them. A fifth kind of intelligence I called bodily kinesthetic. It's the intelligence of the

performer the dancer the athlete the craft person anybody who uses their whole body or parts of the body to solve problems or to make something. I believe the two kinds of intelligence particularly tied to being the human being interpersonal intelligence is understanding of other human beings and intra personal understanding as understanding of yourself. Many people listening will know about Dan Goldman's work on emotional intelligence and that really is quite similar to my notion of personal intelligences and innate intelligence I call the naturalist intelligence it's the intelligence of a Darwin or an Audubon somebody who can readily make distinctions in the world of nature between one and one another between one another between cloud configurations anything that exists in nature and there may be a ninth intelligence a kind of intriguing one called the stench. Will intelligence the intelligence which allows us to ask big questions like Who are we and what are we doing and what's it all about. Why do we have music I would call that an excess tension question. And the series has two interesting claims the first claim is

all of us have these intelligences as it were their way of talking about what the human cognitive apparatus is all about as if because of evolution we have eight or nine different information processing devices which deal with language music space and other kinds of elements in the world. The second claim is that no two people not even identical twins have exactly the same blend or combination of was sake of intelligences. So you and I may have the same intelligence because of what we do but you might be stronger in linguistic I might be stronger in spatial and we can change our strengths by working very hard at them but probably each of the strengths has a certain biological or indeed genetic basis to it. So that that in brief is what the theory of multiple intelligences claims. I put it forth as a theory of psychology because I am a psychologist. What. I hadn't anticipated is that Syria has. How did a lot of interest among educators first in this country and now in other countries people try to devise pedagogically

or curriculum or assessment around the idea of the intelligence of the very interesting to see the kinds of innovations that people have come up with when they say to themselves Look if we've got all these different colleges how can we mobilize and to help kids learn or anybody learn better. Right. And it's interesting because you know if you talk to teachers they will tell you that in any given classroom there are children with widely different abilities or inclinations or seemingly intelligences as you would put it. And the problem they face is that they're supposed to present the curriculum in a way that brings the whole class along on one given track but it may not match the inherent abilities of each student or or it may not be appropriate for each student. So that's a wonderful segue into into the book of mine which was just published. Call the discipline mind where I argue that what we really want to have students acquired by the end of school is a sense of what it's like to think in a disciplined way to think scientifically to think historically to think artistically

and with a lot of evidence that even kids who get good grades in school don't really learn to think in those ways. And so the argument that I put forth in the disciplined mind is that if we try to cover less material in the curriculum and instead went into the topics that we do cover more deeply we would really have a better chance of helping students understand. And when you begin to spend time on things that's when you can mobilize it there for intelligence if you only got five minutes to cover a topic or indeed only a day you're probably going to present it in one way usually in writing or in lecture but willing to spend days even weeks on the topic. Then you can present it pictorially graphically dynamically you can act it out. You can approach it numerically you can approach it in terms of what I call these extension questions and not only will you reach more kids because kids have different. Shall we say strong suits. Intellectually but you also give kids a sense of what it's like to understand something because anything a person understands well if you can think about lots of

different ways. If you think about yourself your family your home your job your hobby. You're not restricted to just think about it words or just think about it pictorially you can think about it in a number of different ways. So the irony is that the fact of our multiple intelligences actually allows us to achieve much better understanding of something than if we only had one way of making sense. I've actually even thought that perhaps the reason that human beings are conscious and other organisms are not conscious in the same way that we are is because we are able to represent things in different ways. And when we can think about something more than one way it's sort of. Notice what it is that how our mind works. But that's that's a that's a theory of consciousness which is very very speculative. Return just to the theoretical construct of multiple intelligences. You know I'm thinking of certain stereotypes we have about people who for example are very good at math. You know the stereotypical you know computer geeks or you know technically oriented person who you know could

even be a genius with numbers but who is socially inept. You know we seem to have this notion that there are inherent tradeoffs between these different areas of intelligence. Do you think that that there is some truth to that or is that simply you know a notion that you know may be true in some cases but isn't universal. It certainly isn't universal. I'm very suspicious of yoking any strength and when intelligence to a strength or weakness in another I mean many people say that musical and mathematical intelligence are connected. Yeah but I'm pretty skeptical about that. My own analysis of that is that music that mathematicians are interested in patterns and music is a wonderful playground for patterns. And so they get very intrigued by all the numbers and rhythms and pulses that they can extract from a musical score. But the other just doesn't seem to work the other way around. There isn't a high correlation between people who are musical and perform well and so on. And any particular interest in math if you doubt that I would invite you to go to the Chicago Symphony and. It's matchbooks among the performers and I think you find it particularly

interesting to them. The the the disjunction that you're claiming I think does have a certain interest though I don't think we really have strong evidence about it. One of things I've written about all the way back to frames of mind is that there is a kind of a rough division among people who are particularly interested in objects and patterns on the one hand and people interested in human beings on the other. And in his earliest two or three you can see kids who love to do puzzles and who love to count and stuff like that. And other kids are much more interested in stories and games of hide and seek where the human element is strong. And of course we all know that there's one condition called autism which is a frank dysfunction in the human realm which is sometimes though not always combined with a very strong patterning in music or mathematics or space or something like that. And so it it may be the case

that at least in some people this is what you would call a syndrome biologically based which orients them very much toward. Lot of patterns and not toward the world of human beings. And then we have the opposite situation in individual who have Down syndrome where their big problem is dealing with symbols in their play to them but they are often socially very appropriate. But I would not want any listener to go beyond the notion that sometimes we have this interesting patterns. I don't think there's anything that's at all intellectual about that most people who are interested in math are perfectly civil and distant and they are able to get along with other people. They may actually find math more interesting. But that's fine. Well very good we have several callers in fact our lungs are filling up fast so I want to go on and include as many people as we can let me just reintroduce our guest were talking during this hour with Howard Gardner. He's a professor of cognition ended education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and he's the originator of the theory of multiple intelligences. And we're talking

this morning with him by telephone he'll be in Champaign Urbana next Thursday evening and we'll be talking at 7 p.m. at Smith Music Hall about musical intelligence. If you'd like to attend you can do that and we have several callers so let's go on and include them. First we have a listener on a car phone on line number four. Good morning you're on focus 580. I yes as you know I didn't realize I've versus want to say this is a very interesting theory and I actually quite like it myself. I wonder if you could kind of relate in how it would affect education in public schools or in just schools in general. I know when I was in school I found it very hard to pay attention for example and I found it in time that I have a very high musical inclination and I'm also very math oriented which is actually kind of stereotypically not associated with each other. I just wondered if you could comment on how this could affect teaching and also kind of related to that how our society is kind of focused on

testing saying well this person is good here or just testing in general saying that this student does fit up to our our guidelines or our goals and the student doesn't. I'm sorry if you could comment on that as well and I'll hang up and listen to your answers. OK. Well actually the caller has raised to the issues which I'm sure other people are interested in as well. As to the first question How has this affected teaching. There have been an enormous number of experiments all over where people try to use we will say at least for this program the fact of multiple intelligences to improve their their education and I think it had to pay its had taken two primary forms the first forms is to make sure that we have each day or each week activities and lessons which so to speak marshal or nurse to different intelligences. I mean very easy to have a school all you did was talk and then a lot of intelligences are being neglected so one use has been to as it were in richer vary the curriculum. The other which is what I write about in the discipline

mind is to approach topics in an in a way that mobilizes more than one intelligence in the discipline mind I talk about three topics the theory of evolution the music of Mozart and the Holocaust. And each of those topics are worth spending time on. If you do spend time on them you can pretend to present them to stories you can present into works of art. You could have kids do hands on kinds of activities. You could have a do group activities and not only does that involve more kids but it gives kids a sense of what it's like to really understand those topics. So those two ways one broaden the curriculum to teach stuff in a number of ways are the two principal ways in which education has been affected by the theory. As for testing that I'm sure the caller and others know that's a huge can of worms. Now today in America it's very politicized. I think that we do way more testing in this country than anywhere else. And there's no particular evidence that the testing itself is any good in fact. The book I'm just reading now which will come out next year

shows the more. Testing that's done in states the poorer the states perform and I think that's a very interesting kind of correlation because of course it goes exactly against what policymakers have to say. That said I'm certain a person who's in favor of assessing I think in any domain including education it's very important to know how people are doing in the only way you can know is to have them perform their understanding as either or they're not understanding. I now use those words quite deliberately. I think that performing is something you should do publicly and simply filling in blanks is a very low form of performing and understanding means not just that you've memorized something and have to regurgitate it back which I think the caller was referring to but rather that you can stretch what you've got that you can you put it to new uses if you've understood the Holocaust. You should be able to analyze what's going on in Rwanda or in Kosovo in a way that you wouldn't if you didn't have an understanding of other kinds of genocide Similarly if you understand something about evolution you can. Despite the discussion about artificial life which is now being created

computers and ways in which that's unlike or unlike natural selection. However if you've just taken a cultural literacy curriculum where you say OK kids we've got our five minutes of the Holocaust Let's go on to the whole the grammar the whole the grammar the Holy Ghost or something like that then of course you're not going to stretch that information it's what Alfred North Whitehead called inert knowledge it just kind of sits there like a Christmas tree ornament with no Christmas tree to hang it on. So those are some thoughts on how I would go about the Ceci. I also just to make one more point. I don't particularly like the idea of going around and measuring people's intelligences per se. I'd much rather say what's not kitty that we think is important. Let's see how people are doing and that activity. Let's see if we can help them do better. So rather than measuring somebody's mathematical intelligence I'd rather say look here are some of the things you need to be able to do to survive in our culture mathematically be able to shop being able to kind of mortgage something like that and see how people do it that rather than assuming that you can have a measure this abstract entity called mathematical intelligence.

Well we have another caller waiting and we'll go to them next and just to mention for the folks who are listening if you'd like to join our conversation you can call us around Champaign-Urbana at 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free anywhere you're listening 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We have a listener in Champaign on line. Good morning you're on focus 580. Good morning. Yeah. First of all say that your work seems to match what I've been to really believe for a very long time. But I mean I think you should know if you're familiar with the work of Paul parasol. I had a number of books recently the Harts code and also the work of Dr. Linda rustic who's a research psychologist at Harvard and also co-director of the Human Energy Systems Laboratory or energy medicine at the University of Arizona. I'm not doing too well in the face of this. Well there you go.

You should know this about why you brought them up. OK. They talk about the heart as an intelligent organ. Oh yes OK. All right I do recognize that. OK I understand. Yeah I don't think I can comment scientifically and that I have to say it sounds a bit weird to me. Clearly we need the heart and the brain together for any kind of mission or emotion to take place. And when we don't have to do the experiment we know that are free remove either that you know not much is going to go on. But I don't feel I can give a scientific account of that that work. Just wondering if you know you deal with the well probably you don't since you know you find this weird but they would say that the brain often over rules of the intelligence of the heart but that if you know you learn to allow that to do something you're thinking that.

You know you'd be a lot better off and that it is actually an intelligent organ. Well certainly I have no problem with using the heart metaphorically as you do and I quite agree. Well they don't use that metaphor I know what I'm saying when you begin to do it. When you begin to use it literally then I don't feel I can comment on it scientifically. I just don't understand enough about the cardiac system and how it works. Well that's some of the research they're going into and dealing with cellular memory actually recovering memories of the donor in the receptor yet they've had instances where somebody has you know received a heart transplant actually recovering the memory owner. Well you know part of being scientists is being very skeptical and very conservative. So this is intriguing but I suppose somebody like me would have to be convinced a lot of people think that this is plausible because it sounds so so counter-intuitive but you and I both know that sometimes counter-intuitive things have been shown to be correct so I don't want to comment on the

scientifically I'm way too far away from that issue. But you might want to look into that. OK well I appreciate the suggestion. Thanks for the call. But okay well it does bring to mind the question that I had and this is you know as it relates to your model of multiple intelligences the concept of empathy for other humans and this. Something perhaps might be regarded as part of interpersonal intelligence right. Empathy is actually an issue that I've discussed with Dan Goleman of the air Dan Goleman is the author of the well-known book on emotional intelligence and one of his criteria of emotional intelligence is empathy fact that you can empathize with others. And there's no question to me that part of interpersonal intelligence is being able to put yourself in the mindset of somebody else where I have more trouble. It's knowing whether you actually have to sort of feel the way that they do. And even more whether the fact that you feel the way they do with dictate how you behave toward

them. We talked about that Hitler and Dan Goleman said Of course it couldn't have any empathy. And I said Well it depends how you define empathy. If you mean could you figure out how other people were thinking and feeling I think the answer is quite clearly yes but. That was able to prevent him from doing things which are anti-social The answer is clearly no. And to capture that I quoted a well-known stupid joke which is that the masochist says me and the sadist says I will not because the sadist knows that being good is what the masochist likes. So in one sense he's empathetic he can put himself into the masochist body but the other hand playing his role as a sadist. He's just not going to hate him. And Dan Goldman would say he lacked empathy and I might say well maybe he doesn't lack empathy just doesn't want to act on the basis of it. But to return to your question certainly understanding how other people would think about his situation and feel about his situation is a very important part of interpersonal intelligence and it's something which a lot of us worry about in

this post Littleton era. Well the point that Richard Rorty makes about empathy is it involves imagination involves placing ourselves in the shoes of someone as if what they are experiencing is you know what we might experience and we can identify and see ourselves as that other person in that you know he's point is that this is something that we lack a great deal of in this in this very fast paced world that we lack the capacity or perhaps even the time to imagine each other in that sense and you know I guess my question comes to the you know the point of where imagination fits in. On to these issues of intelligence and you know interpersonal relations in media interpersonal interactions Well I have a general approach to issues of what's often called human faculties like memory perception learning imagination intuition and the general approach is that I am suspicious of these as

being traits which cut across a wide range of contents. But I would rather believe in AI. I think there's some scientific evidence in favor of this is that each form of intelligence as it were has its own set of faculties. So to be specific there's a linguistic memory there's a musical memory there's spatial memory and you could be good in remembering locations but not particularly remember musical works or vice versa. Similarly I think each intelligence has its own form of imagination which very literally means being able to conjure up entities in their absence. So if you have a good spatial imagination you can think about the spatial arrangement when you're not there and you can play around with it in your own mind and so on it from your good musical imagination you can create and play around with musical forms and again I don't think is a particular reason why having a good imagination in one realm would dictate or not dictate good imagination in other rounds. If you have interpersonal imagination. Which I

guess many of us use without thinking about it you're able to imagine what it's like to be in conversation with someone else to see things from their point of view. And you know we do it all the time when we rehearse in our mind what's going to happen when we have a dicey situation coming up that's an exercising of interpersonal imagination. Now you know Rorty might also be using imagination in the much broader sense of what of what artists do you know namely you know Picasso obviously had a very vivid imagination and he captured it in painting and so on. And my guess is that when we talk use imagination that broader sense it might well involve a number of different intelligences working together. The intelligence is a kind of like a tool kit or a chemistry set. They're what God or Nature gave us for thinking with. But there's no particular restrictions in how we put them together. Very good. Now Nonetheless what I would say is if you say of somebody he or she has a good imagination or not much of an imagination it's always useful to say well what's the example I have in mind. And could I assume that their imagination would be equally strong in other

areas. OK. Well we have a couple other listeners waiting to talk so let's include them. Next up a listener in Urbana on line number one. Good morning you're in focus 580. Yes good morning. I was I had two questions. One I was wondering if you've ever heard of the educator. Deborah Meyer sure. She's actually recently moved to Boston she said. Famous principal from New York City who did first elementary and high schools now has begun and now primary school and in Boston she's a person whom I admire a tremendously. Yeah I've studied too. I particularly like her approach of wanting to instill particular habits of mind habits of mind in kids things like looking for evidence looking for another point to do looking like looking for connections between that asking What if this or that happened and whether something really matters or not. And but in thinking about what her approach in your approach I was just

wondering if just how much it is you have in common or you are in conflict. OK well I can speak a bit about that without hopefully making it. Difficult for people who haven't read her to appreciate she's a little bit suspicious of my notion of different kinds of intelligence because she's afraid it's going to be reified that is people going to walk around and talk about. Johnny has spatial intelligence and not an English sticker or vice a versa and that's a danger which I worry about as well when it comes to the topic of disciplines which is my most recent book. I think that she probably would say the kinds of things that you said namely using your mind well is what's important and learning about specific disciplines may not be as important as I think it is. But I think at a practical level we're pretty close because I think we're both say that in high school folks try to cover way too much. If we go make for highly splintered judgments within disciplines we have

chemistry first year in physics second year in biology third year and so on. And what both Deborah Meyer and I would say it's important to know what it means to think scientifically but you can learn that from examining lots of Sciences You don't have to just do certain ones in certain orders. Well maybe but it would. If you can learn to think scientifically from examining any science you don't have to keep piling on. So I would say that from any distance Deborah my and I are very similar I've learned a tremendous amount from her surely as a heroine of mine. But when you get up close you know we don't agree about everything and she hasn't hesitated to say to me and in print where she disagrees. That's good to hear. Then yes I think the question. Yeah last question I was curious about. Interview with Mr. Brockman I think his name was right. Yeah. Brockman is a literary agent who's been instrumental in promoting intellectual discussion in print and on the internet among people who are interested in science and social science and literature.

Yeah it was it was interesting to me because I've taught in high schools myself and I get the feeling that apparently he had and that is that he said that if it could. Finished high school that might be time to fit as well. Excuse me I said your time by John Brockman Right right. Yeah I just had a son just finished high school so he's got a mind for his father as well as as a teacher. Well I was thinking in he seemed he seemed to think that you were a little bit ivory tower and the idea that this could help. This could be good for all kids. He was speaking of your new book. Well I'm thinking that I'm thinking also from my own personal experience. For example when you talk about I think you call them entry points. Yes to discussions that you can have in high school that would allow a deep you know get the class involved deeply in important topics.

Yeah I think you kind of underestimate how how what kind of a of a breakout you'd have in the class. You seem to think that that all kids would be could be you know kind of been captured this way but it's really much more difficult than that you. You must you must be. In particular the thing I wanted to mention was that you really must be more more current your topics have to be much more much more. You have to start at least from a point very current very you know something and I understand what you're saying and let me let me try to respond to it. For us first of all I am here trying to give a vision of what I would like education to be like and I think we need people who are not afraid to put forth a personal vision even though they don't believe it tomorrow but if they drop what they're doing and adopt it as I say the beginning of a disciplined mind. We've had way too much talk about charters vouchers unions all these instrumental things and not enough talk about what it's what is it

about at the end of the day and what Deborah Meier and I are both trying to say is what's really important. And my book is written from from that vantage point. However I think something which maybe I haven't made clear enough is understanding of topics like evolution or Mozart or the Holocaust is where I want students to end. But the teacher has to use all the skills that he or she has in his or her possession to help the kids get there and you always have to start with where the learner is. So in this one mind and study about evolution I start with an issue which I find very fascinating namely why in the Galapagos Islands in a very small distance do you have birds that differ. It kind speaks and why do birds of one kind of beak are they on one island and birds of another kind of beacon another island and I think that's a good entry point for many students I think they would find it interesting. But if you have students who find that alien I'll tell you an evolution that I've never met a student and isn't interested in that's the evolution of fashion. You know how do coding change when you're the next Why do cars change from one year to the next. And that would be an entry

point for students who might even be determinedly into anti-intellectual. But the point is we don't have to have school to teach Star Wars or to teach or rap music kids go to that anyway. School needs to start with what for that kids find interesting and then bring into things which are important but they may not intrinsically find interesting. That's the heart of teaching and I do believe that while it's certainly harder in some places than others and it's more difficult now than it was 50 years or 100 years ago that if you don't believe it's possible you shouldn't be in teaching. It's very good. Make one quick comment and then I'll get off. That's not really a question but I think the you mentioned interpersonal skill as being one of the nine traits that people have. The I think that one's a really hard nut to crack and I which comment a bit more about that but thank you. Thanks for the call. Very very briefly I think the way that human beings learn about other human beings is

through the interactions which they observe. And that's why in school the nature of the community how teachers relate to one another how they relate to parents how they relate to kids that's the important message and that determines whether you have an happy sphere which is comfortable and where people are in tactic or one which is competitive or antisocial. We all have the potential to go either way. There are some characters out of history like Malcolm X where you really could see them being pulled toward a more destructive or a more positive point of view and of course literature is filled with characters who are tempted in in both ways but the tipping point at a certain At a certain point. And when kids are young the encounters they have with other human beings are terribly important and it's very very sad when kids have no adults or older people whom they can admire. I was talking to a teacher of 12 year olds in Indianapolis earlier this year. They had a student who was quite difficult wasn't a basically good student but he found a relationship with a student at the end of the year.

The students said Mr. Smith you were the first person in the world ever to say that you love me. What an incredible thing that kid could go up to the age of 12 in this country nobody ever said they loved him. But it's probably not the only kid who's had that experience. Our lines are all full. And we're going to run a time I think before we get to everyone but we'll do our best and let me just mention again that we're talking this morning during this hour focus 580 with Howard Gardner. He's professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and we're talking about his theory of multiple intelligences and sort of a sample of a lecture or at least a hint of that that he will be giving next Thursday evening 7:00 p.m. at the Smith Music Hall on the campus of the University of Illinois. That's free and open to the public so you should feel free to attend. Let's go on and include as many people as we can before we run out of time next listener in Champaign County line number two. Good morning on focus 580. Hi. I'll try to keep my questions brief here. I have maybe two interests.

One is sort of your reaction to our far Times visual thinking kind of process. How does that fit in with your or where does that fit into your multiple intelligences. Oh whatever I have is an old friend and I was lucky enough to be his student many years ago at Harvard who's now a professor emeritus living in an arbor and still writing and thinking at age of 95 so he said he's not a hero of mine. He wrote a book about 30 years ago called visual thinking which basically argued that. Cognition comes out of our sensory prophecies and that vision has a privileged position among that. And I think in doing so he really called attention to something that I agree with namely if you only think about thinking or rationality or intelligence in terms of language and logic you're missing a very important aspect of the mind. So I'm very sympathetic to the kinds of examples that he used in in in his book on visual thinking where I would disagree is that

I don't think that visual intelligence is privileged over others. I think people just have different strengths which they use. And also I think I have to say in fairness to it of our time who is a very old friend I mean we've known each other for almost 40 years that he believes that there is a kind of intelligence which underlies all the different sensory organs he believes the single underlying intelligence. And there he and I don't agree to believes that you know if people are intelligent they are intelligent. Kind of across the board. And that's something that I don't agree with. If for you and other listeners who are interested in in the psychology of this root of our time is what's called a gestalt psychologist and psychologists believe that basically the human mind is a pattern forming kind of device and that the visual patterns were privileged because of the nature of our species and of course there's a lot a lot of our brain is is directed toward visual processing. I am a couple of generations younger than we are in time and I'm much more sympathetic to an approach in

psychology which is called modular and that basically argues that the human mind isn't a single device it's a number of relatively separate devices. I do think the preponderance of evidence is in favor of my position rather than our times but I'm obviously not an unbiased observer and he's a very wise man. Well I appreciate that. And let me bring this into a more contemporary kind of. Discussion of the mental process then and I ask about your reaction to Richard Bennett's theory of consciousness. You mean even Dan did. Yes Dan is a dead then it is a very eminent philosopher interested in cognition who is a colleague of mine he's in Boston at Tufts University and Dan is in many ways a deep bunker. He says you know we think about consciousness in the sense that the little guy inside the head looking out at the screen and making sense of things and that this is a primitive way of thinking

and that we'd be better off to dispense with it in in doing so I think he takes a position which many people including me have sympathy with when I think about my own theory of intelligence is no little guy in there turning all the knobs and saying which intelligence should be working. Rather we've got these We've got this machinery and it just tries to make sense of things. The best the best we can. But Dan is more of a critic than that. He questions the usefulness of consciousness in the sense that most of us think about it namely a heightened state of perception where we are aware if we are aware. Some people have quipped and Dan himself has recognized the script that day and unlike his title hasn't really explained consciousness he explained it away. What generally Dan Dennett is very nervous or impatient with anything that smacks of vitalism or agency or even things like intention. He says we have

to treat people and and machines as if they have intentions and have it is that they have feelings that they have beliefs. But that's just the way we way of thinking about it that deep down it's just neurons talking to neurons and schemes talking to schemes schemas talking to schemas and that I'm not so terribly sympathetic to I think that there's a lot of intelligence in folk psychology and that the effort to as it were reduce everything to a non intentional non conscious kind of language really underestimates what's what's special about about cognition. Thanks so much. Okay thanks for the call. We have just about five minutes left with our guest Howard Gardner And we have a couple callers and we'll try to get both and we'll talk next with a listener in our COLA on line number four. Good morning you're on.

Yes I did want to tell you that I think your work is very very very good. My husband teaches Machin and has some other colleagues that are trying to use your material in the classroom and they're having great success with this. My husband teaches history and so I want to compliment you on your work. He found a lot of development in the students that were not coming forth. One of the more difficult things I think he had to kind of encounter was that the extent he teaches history and one of the students who are extremely bright. And sciences and so forth tend to have more trouble dealing with the other aspects of you or the intelligence. And they have no patience to deal with the more creative

aspects such as they are and so forth. When projects are presented with all aspects. I think that this may be a very genuine phenomenon. There is a a kind of panic in our country which is completely unrealistic that somehow we don't do the subject and cover everything in it that we will somehow never get to college never get to life it's completely nonsense. The country is more of a role than it's ever been in history. But. Many people still feel very nervous when they can't see the immediate utility of anything for getting a job or getting into Harvard. My view is that teachers are professionals they have a calling. They have to believe that what they're doing is important and they have to be able to defend what it is that they're doing. I don't think anybody should do multiple intelligences to please Howard Gardner That would be ridiculous. But if you take a multiple intelligences point of view you need to have a reason for it you need to be able to explain it and explain it again.

And if you have a good reason and you're pretty articulate you can probably convince a lot of people but it's not easy because both our policymakers and our media give what I call a Vanna White or Jeff jeopardy view of the mind namely the more stuff you you know you shove in the better and anything that that smacks of depth or beauty is has to be dispensed with. It's a very sad situation but I think you've got to fight it and that's what I try to do in a disciplined mind. Apologies to the caller but we're running into our last couple of minutes in we're we're just about THE POINT we're going to stop. I do want to ask you to talk a little bit about the art's big. I find that music in the arts is mentioned very prominently in your work. Why is this so important to to learn. It's not an accident because in fact music is very important to me I was a serious cannister as a young person. I taught canter for a while and while I don't play much anymore I sit for about an hour each day with my 13 year old at the piano I hope he likes it I I love it and I think that the

disciplines in general and classical music in particular are among the most wonderful inventions of human beings which I sometimes forget their inventions we take it for granted. But it's only an accident that we have happened to have Bach and Mozart of the Beatles and Duke Ellington and Scott Joplin people like that could very well never have been. These are the notion of creating harmony and writing music down and things like that those are all human inventions. So I want to say that at a time when we're re-examining everything we really need to pay attention to those things which over the long run have given lots of pleasure and meaning to people and for me at least music is very high on a list and that's one reason I'm looking forward to coming to Baton next week and talking with other people about musical intelligence. Well very good. We sort of hinted at. That topic but for those of you listening if you'd like to hear more from our guest Howard Gardner You can attend the keynote speech at this conference on cognitive processes of children engaged in musical activity and that'll be next Thursday evening 7:00 p.m. at the Smith Music Hall on the campus of the University

of Illinois in ur band sponsored by the school of music here. And so you can hear him speak on music in the family of human intelligences Also if you'd like to read more of Howard Gardner's work. You can look for his latest book The disciplined mind what all students should understand just published by Simon Schuster and our guest Howard Gardner once again is a professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. And I want to thank you very much for spending time with us and very interesting but I've enjoyed talking to you on the colors. Thanks so much. Today's broadcast is made possible in part by a grant from the Center for Advanced Study whose Milla call 909 program presents a series of informative events on the U.S. campus convents are free and open to the public. More information is available by calling 3 3 3 1 1 1 8 or visiting their website at w w w dot S. S. Doughty UIUC dot edu. Today's broadcast is also made possible with support from Linda sheets of RE MAX

realty associates specializing in distinctive homes professional brokers serving the needs of buyers and sellers in the champagne Urbana area. Linda invites you to join her in supporting public broadcasting. We'll leave it there for this hour when we return in just a few minutes we'll be talking with novelist Neal Stephenson. His latest is Cryptonomicon He's also the author of Snow Crash a Diamond Age and Zodiac. Very interesting work and we'll talk about that and give you sample of that in just a few minutes first we'll take a break for some news and market update.