Opus 2017-378: Family Feud Education

Sometimes you need to get out of the forest to see how many trees have been destroyed by the beetles.  As a teacher I was always being indoctrinated in the idea that there are many types of intelligence.  It is more than book learning and the ability to do well on the SAT.  There is a logic to that, I admit.  I think of my brother who could build you a house but had a hard time writing a letter.  I, on the other hand, can’t cut a board straight.  He would have been what is called kinesthetic.  I was a traditional linguistic.  Originally, according to Gardner, there are seven intelligences.  Not to let a good idea go to waste that was expanded to nine and for all I know has grown beyond that.  I think many of them could be covered with snowflake intelligence because there are so many that can only learn in their isolated safe-space.

What was interesting to me is that Gardner did not honor the traditional method of research and analysis of data.

“Gardner’s approach is also radical in that he does not defend his theory with quantitative data.  He draws on findings from anthropology to zoology in his narrative., but, in a field that has been intensely quantitative since its inception, Gardner’s work is uniquely devoid of psychometric or other quantitative evidence.” page 18

What that means is there is no evidence for his theory.  It is true because he likes the idea.  The dangerous part of this is that education now thinks this way.  The standards and techniques that are in control of education are based on what the elite wants to be considered.  It is kind of like Family Feud research.  If you have watched the program, the right answers are determined by a random group of people giving a response.  It is accurate for those people that day but it is not scientific.

So when someone tells you how smart their child is you need to understand that they may be talking about the kid’s ability to throw tantrums, not his ability to write an essay.

Herrnstein, Richard J. and Murray, Charles.  The Bell Curve.  New York:  The Free Press, 1994.

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