Thursday, September 15, 2016

How Am I Smart? by Dr. Kathy Koch

A Parent's Guide to Multiple Intelligences
When I heard Dr. Koch speak about the multiple intelligences I was transported back to my college years when I took a semester long class about  utilizing the multiple intelligences while teaching.    Dr. Howard Gardner first coined the concept and created these categories:  linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalist, interpersonal and intrapersonal .
Dr. Koch describes the intelligences and includes these categories for each intelligence:  1. competence 2. identity 3. purpose  4. belonging  5. security.
This book was written in a very easy to read format.  Junior and high school school students could easily read it and comprehend it.
As I read this book, I agreed with these eight gifts/tendencies but I struggled to conclude with her that if a person possesses any one of these, they are smart.  There are people out there who are really smart (able to acquire skills and knowledge and apply them quickly).  Schools and the way they expect kids to learn lean towards linguistic and logical-mathematical.
I talked about my fickle feelings with a close friend (whom I define really, really smart) and their opinion was that saying these gifts are intelligences was a misnomer.  They agreed that people are blessed with these gifts but did not really equate them to intelligence.
I am interested in seeing what strengths my boys have.
-Borrowed from the library.

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