Do you think you’re smart? What does it mean to be smart anyway? Many people believe being smart is all about getting good grades and high test scores in school. Lots of people think being smart means you can do things like:
So, what do you think being smart means?
Here’s something that may surprise you: Being smart isn’t only about getting good grades, scoring well on tests, and memorizing stuff. In fact, there are lots of other ways to show your smarts—through art, music, athletics, nature, emotions, and getting along with others (to name a few). In this book, you’ll discover that there are many ways to be smart.
For about the past 100 years, experts have often used IQ tests to figure out how smart people are. IQ stands for intelligence quotient, and it is a measure of how someone scores on the test. The test has you solve math problems, define words, create designs, repeat numbers from memory, and do other tasks. Maybe you’ve taken an IQ test.
Many people think that IQ tests are the best way to measure how smart someone is. IQ tests aren’t perfect though, and there’s a lot they can’t tell you. They can’t predict what you’ll do when you grow up or what you can achieve in your life. And the test questions may reflect the biases, or opinions, of the people who created them. Besides, no test can test for everything. The questions don’t always give you the best chance to show off your different kinds of smarts. IQ tests generally focus most of their attention on being good with words or numbers, and they neglect other important things like music, art, nature, and social ability.
Recently, people have challenged the idea that IQ is the best measure of intelligence. One of those people is a psychologist and a professor of education from Harvard University named Dr. Howard Gardner. Thanks in part to his work, experts now have a whole new idea of what it means to be smart.
Since IQ tests are limited and don’t test for the wide range of abilities that people often show and use, Dr. Gardner suggests they aren’t a true measure of how smart someone really is.
Dr. Gardner decided there isn’t just one way to be smart but rather many different ways. He used his research with kids and adults to discover more about how people learn. Dr. Gardner found out that people seemed to learn and show their smarts in a lot of ways. He also noticed that different parts of the brain seemed to be tied to the different ways of being smart. He came up with an idea, or theory, to explain the wide range of abilities he was seeing. He called his idea the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (or MI theory for short).
If you think about it, Dr. Gardner’s idea about different kinds of intelligence makes sense. There are plenty of examples of people who haven’t scored well on IQ tests or who haven’t even been tested on what they’re good at doing, but who are clearly very smart in many other ways. These might include people who paint, climb mountains, make business deals, explore nature, or invent machines. Certainly, you can score well on an IQ test and still do those things, but your test results won’t necessarily show everything that you’re good at.
MI theory says there are eight (and maybe nine) different kinds of intelligence—eight or nine ways to be smart! (There may even be more, but they haven’t been identified yet.) Each of these different kinds of intelligence can be described by certain traits, activities, and interests.
When Dr. Gardner published books about his theory, he came up with names for the different kinds of intelligences. Here are the eight kinds of smart he talked about: (1) Linguistic Intelligence, (2) Musical Intelligence, (3) Logical-Mathematical Intelligence, (4) Spatial Intelligence, (5) Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence, (6) Interpersonal Intelligence, (7) Intrapersonal Intelligence, and (8) Naturalist Intelligence. There also may be a ninth intelligence called Existential Intelligence or Life Smart (we’ll talk about it in the last chapter of this book, see Chapter 9).
I’ve been studying Dr. Gardner’s work for over 25 years now. Over the years, I’ve written many books for adults on multiple intelligences. But because I’ve also spent many years teaching kids, I wanted to write a book that would help young people. I hope to explain MI theory in a way that makes it easy for you to understand, because I think it’s important for kids like you to make the most of all your smarts.
To make things easier, I’ve created some simpler language to describe the nine intelligences:
The next nine chapters will describe in detail each of the nine ways to be smart. As you read through them, notice where you see yourself most clearly, and where you see your friends, your family, and even your teachers in each of the intelligences. This book will help you learn about who you are and who you can be. Not only that, it will also help you understand and get along better with the people around you—your brothers and sisters, your parents, your friends, your teachers, and others. You’ll learn that everyone has different strengths and different ideas about how to do things, which will make it easier to understand them, get along with them, and even learn from them. So maybe this book will help you pick up basketball tips from your Body Smart older sister, learn from your Logic Smart teacher, or get along better with your Self Smart friend.
Here’s the good news: You already have all nine kinds of smart. Really! You’re not just one type of smart. In different degrees, you’re smart in all of the ways this book describes. This doesn’t mean you’re great at everything (no one’s that good); but you do have some ability in each area. As you read about the different intelligences, you’re probably going to discover that you see at least a little bit of yourself in each of them. So, you’re already nine times smarter than you were before you read this.
Here’s more good news:
Practically everywhere you look in life you can see signs of multiple intelligences at work. You might see Nature Smart and Picture Smart in your neighbor who has a beautiful garden. You might see Word Smart in your brother who’s always writing in his journal, or Music Smart in your mom who loves to sing. You might be learning math at school from a Logic Smart teacher or social studies from a People Smart teacher. You may have a Body Smart friend who juggles, or a Self Smart friend who started her own business. You might see the different intelligences in the Body Smart bus driver who takes you to school, or the People Smart clerk at the grocery store. Everywhere you turn—at home, in your classroom, or in public—you can see the different smarts at work.
Chances are, though, you can see the different smarts most easily in yourself. After all, who do you spend the most time with? Yourself, of course. If the multiple intelligences aren’t obvious to you, that’s okay. This book will help you recognize and make the most of them.
Each of us uses all nine intelligences every day, but each of us is unique in how we show our smarts. In a way, it’s as if the nine intelligences were different notes of an octave (plus one) on a musical scale: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D. Each one of us is like a different song made up of those nine notes. The way we combine the notes is unique, so no song is exactly the same. When you use all of your intelligences as much as you can—in your own unique way—you will fill the world with a marvelous tune that nobody else can make!
If you’d like to write to me, I’d love to hear from you. Send letters to:
Dr. Thomas Armstrong
American Institute for Learning and Human Development
115 Broad Street #548
Cloverdale, CA 95425
Or email me at thomas@institute4learning.com.