What about Multiple Intelligence

First, let’s turn back a few pages of our lives and think about our children or even ourselves when we were toddlers. How did we learn a complete language - our mother tongue?

 

At one or two years of age children are not taught language using textbooks in classrooms, they learn from the sounds, words, sentences spoken by people around them. Often, when talking to children this young we use actions along with words to help them understand. Therefore, in most cases, children can associate a visual or a gesture with what is being said. Many a time the child is part of the action that is being described. For instance, when we say, "Come let’s eat our lunch", "You look cute in that towel", "The swing was so much fun", we are including children when we talk. Therefore, children constantly "feel" the verbal interaction around them. In fact, when a child does not feel the words spoken to him/her, you can see that he/she simply ignores it.

 

So a child this young uses visuals, actions, and feelings to gather data about words and sentences and then applies logic to figure out what the word, sentence and indeed the whole communication means. Another way children learn is to repeat what they hear or see, build patterns, sing songs and rhymes even if they don’t understand the words.

So you can see how a child mixes logic, pictures, actions, words and self reflection effortlessly, naturally, to learn a language on his/her own.

 

Second, let’s visit a play area where Sneha is hanging upside down from the bars. Preeti is singing loudly as she goes round and round in the merry-go-round, while Ishaan is counting, laboriously, the number of steps as he climbs the slide's ladder. Vinita is patiently teaching two others how to get the see-saw working, while Varun has created a complex network of roads in the sand pit to run his truck through. Aarti is fearlessly playing with the big dog - both chasing each other--while Neeraj is telling his mother a long-winded story about what happened to him yesterday. Sachin appears to be in his own world, content to simply watch others.

 

See how in one playground children with different abilities related to body, music, numbers, people, pictures, nature, words and self reflection, can come together and enjoy.

 

Third, let’s peep into Girija aunty’s kindergarten class . Girija aunty wants children to learn numbers. She knows numbers in themselves are meaningless and that they acquire significance when actual quantities are attached to it. The task she has given to children is to find out how many children have come to class today.

Anju picks up blocks kept in a basket and assigns one to each child (through she misses keeping one for herself).

Neeta and Manoj count on their fingers, while Shireen is drawing one box for each child.

Manu is deep in thought, no one knows about what, but one can see his eyes flutter from one child to another, as if he is counting them. Mohin is walking around singing a song in his own rap style, "Neeta is here and Manoj is here and Anju is here". While Karen is sure of numbers and is using actual numbers to count the class strength, Jatin is writing the names of each child (he knows their starting letters) to make a list.

Note how the same concept is being assimilated differently by different children using different mediums like body, music, people, pictures, self, music, nature, number and words.

 

When Howard Gardner put forth his Theory of Multiple Intelligences (in 1983), he was only acknowledging something we have all intuitively known - the existence of different abilities (intelligences) inside each one of us. However, our traditional teaching approach/methods seem to ignore the wonderful implications of this understanding of multiple intelligence.

 

Having worked with children using a framework of multiple intelligence for the past 10 years, we know this  makes learning active, interactive, interesting, exciting and joyful. It builds the child's belief in his or her own abilities, strengths and interests. It is the perfect framework to make early childhood education holistic and complete.

 

Hence, we start a year long series on multiple intelligence in early childhood active classrooms. While this article explores the implication of multiple intelligence, the articles that follow will give you strategies to use and explore each intelligence in the classroom.

 

Let’s start with reviewing the three scenarios described above and see what insights we can draw from them.

 

If we were to learn everything the way we learned when we were young children--our mother tongue, for instance--we would continue to learn at great speeds. Young children learn so quickly because they put to use all their intelligences. They instinctively know they can learn in different ways; they see no reason to hold back or compartmentalize their learning into subjects. They believe “the whole world is mine", and they dive headlong into the unknown. This use of multiple intelligences to learn has two benefits: one, the learning is comprehensive, deep, flexible and meaningful. Two, the child consciously puts to use to all the eight intelligences, thereby helping him/her realize, in due course, his/her strengths. This exposure of all eight intelligences is critical in early childhood, as it offers a more holistic developmental base for the future nurturing of the stronger intelligences.

 

The playground scene demonstrates how each child has a different preference and strength. What is "child's play" or fun for one could be scary or boring for another. This diversity arises from each child having a different set of stronger or natural intelligences. Is one child less than the other simply because he or she has different strong intelligences? Do we need to compare children? How about accepting all children as equally blessed, differently blessed? It’s not about how intelligent we are, rather it’s about HOW we are intelligent. Let’s make an assertion: the best environment a school or teacher can offer children is one built on acceptance. When a child realizes that he does not need to compete with another, he need not be as good as another, it gives him a base of equality, of self belief and empowerment. When children are accepted they become open to trying out other things.

 

Unlike the playground, children in Girija aunty's class are learning the same thing. But each one is learning in a different way. We all have learning preferences - ways in which we like to learn. Shouldn't we reach out to the children in ways that allow them to learn better? As teachers say, "The best way to teach a child is the way the child can learn best".

But how does one cater to different needs of a varied class of say, twenty kids? All pre-primary school teachers would have experienced how, the moment you give only one kind of activity to all children, some dive into it, some groan and some simply oppose or resist being part of it.

It’s the same with food - each one has a different taste. So what we do is, we offer a buffet. A spread of different ways to learn what we want to learn. The implication is obvious - children need to be given a variety to choose from. A buffet of choices helps the child to not just own the outcome but also the way to reach it (my way). 

 

Here is an invitation to set out with your group of children for the next six days - each day with the same objective but doing the task differently. Check out how the same topic can be embellished by different intelligences. Hope this will entice you to read the article in this column next month, which will talk about the implementation of multiple intelligence in classroom.

 

Take your class out each day to see a tree using one way of 'seeing' each day. Tell them it will be as if they are using "special glasses":

 

 

Aditi - Ratnesh

Geniekids