The theory of resolutions

I loved my job as a teacher, but I have to be honest. The world of education tends to operate in redundant cycles of the “next new thing.” I’m an advocate of teaching strategies based on sound research, but not of push-button solutions that claim to solve all learning difficulties with the wave of a magic (and often costly) wand.

I’m old enough to believe in the magical effects of common sense, so I chuckled inwardly as I sat through all the meetings in the early 2000s that centered on the instructional impact of Harvard alum Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. May I explain it to you in a sentence? Students possess a range of natural abilities (intelligences), often causing them to gravitate toward any of a number of different learning styles, so be sure to plan for that in your classroom.

Sounds suspiciously like common sense, doesn’t it?

I’m not here to cast aspersions. As a teacher, falling into an instructional rut is at once easy and harmful—easy for the teacher, harmful for the students. If the theory of multiple intelligences made us more mindful of good instructional practice back then, bravo. It’s the silly “chasing after new theories and ignoring anything of value that came before” mindset that makes me reach for the nearest soapbox.

Gardner’s list of intelligences included categories like visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic, musical-rhythmic, logical-mathematical, inter- and intrapersonal, naturalistic, and bodily-kinesthetic aptitudes, along with a few he added later.

So I suppose the students who incessantly flipped water bottles were bodily-kinesthetically aware, while those who were sent by their classmates to ask for an extension on a difficult assignment possessed good verbal-linguistic and interpersonal skills (complete with a talent for delivering the quasi-ornery yet ingratiating smile), and the ones with earbuds just needed a good dose of AC/DC to keep 

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