INTERVIEW:
Question 1
Can you explain your theory of multiple intelligence, the theory that has made you famous
all over the world?
Answer
When most people use the word intelligence they think of a single intelligence that
you’re born with and that you cannot change very much. And they place a lot of value
on what’s called an IQ test, a set of questions which you answer well or not so well.
I think that the IQ test is a reasonable measure of how people will do in school. But once
one gets out of school it’s really a very narrow view of what human intellect is
like. In my own work, I have thrown away tests because I don’t think that they can
survey the entire spectrum of human abilities. Instead, I’ve studied the brain, and
how the brain has evolved over many years. I’ve also studied the kinds of abilities
which are valued in different cultures, not just our culture today but our culture
historically, and cultures all around the world. As a result of that study over many
years, I’ve defined at least eight different intelligences. The standard definition
of intelligence and the standard test looks at two intelligences: linguistic and logical,
which are very important in school. But I claim there are at least six other
intelligences, including musical, spatial - the ability to appreciate large spaces the way
a pilot or sailor would or more local spaces, the way a sculptor or architect or chess
player would; bodily kinaesthetic intelligence - the intelligence of the dancer, the
athlete, the crafts person, the performer; two kinds of personal intelligence
-understanding of other people, how they work, how to motivate them, how to get along with
them; and intrapersonal intelligence, which is the understanding of yourself, who you are,
what you’re trying to achieve, what you can do to be more successful in your our own
life. Recently I have added a new intelligence called the "naturalist
intelligence". It’s the capacity to recognise different objects in nature,
living things, plants, animals, and also other things in nature like rocks or clouds or
different kinds of weather.
Now, all of us have these intelligences. In fact, one can say that I’m defining
human beings, not the way Socrates did, as rational animals, but as animals who have
language and logic and music and so on. However, it’s also the case that while we all
have these intelligences, no two people have exactly the same combination of intelligences
- one person is stronger in linguistic, another in spatial - and also the way we combine
the intelligences or don’t combine the intelligences is different across people, and
that’s where the educational implications come in. Because either we can treat
everybody as if they’re the same, which simply addresses one kind of intelligence, or
we can try and understand the intelligences of children and personalise, individualise,
education as much as possible.
My belief is that even if you want everybody to learn the same material, you can still
teach it in many ways, and you could also assess or evaluate what the student is learning
in many ways. That’s incidentally where technology comes in - individualising the
curriculum, the materials, the subject matters for the students, and giving them lots of
ways of studying and lots of ways of mastering the material.
Question 2
What role do the new technologies play in this theory of multiple intelligences?
Answer
Every intelligence traditionally is exploited by different technologies: a linguistic
intelligence by the simple technology of the pen, the book, the microphone; logical and
mathematical intelligence by the technology of an abacus or an adding machine or a
computer; musical intelligence with instruments, synthesisers and so on. As long as you
have human beings and an intelligence, you will develop a technology to amplify what you
direct with that intelligence. But I think what people want to know is: what is the
relationship between intelligence and the new technologies? It’s very important to
understand that technology is simply a tool, no more and no less. I have a pen here;
it’s a tool. I can use the pen to write a sonnet, like Shakespeare or Dante. I can
also use the pen to poke somebody’s eye out. It’s just a tool. And computers can
be used to manipulate people or to free them. Computers can be used to teach people in the
same boring "skill and drill" way that people have been taught for many years or
they can be used to teach them in very new ways. Obviously, I would like the technologies
to be used in ways which free individuals, which allow individuals more access than they
may have had in the past. Let me use myself as an example.
I have quite strong musical intelligence, but not particularly good spatial
intelligence. So when I was in school and I was asked to try and imagine a 3-dimensional
figure and how it was transformed, that was difficult for me to do in my head. Now I could
create an image on a computer screen and turn it around and do in front of me what I used
to have to do in my head. Because I am better in musical intelligence, if I listen to a
fugue, for example, which has a theme in it, I can hear the way the theme gets transformed
or picked up by another voice. I can do that with my own ear. But if I couldn’t do
that with my own ear, I could get a tape recorder, record the fugue, separate out the
voices, follow one through from one part of the piece to the next, and again technology
would help me to do what I can’t do inside my own head.
From my own perspective, the greatest promise of technology is to individualise
education. If a teacher has 30 or 40 students and no technology, the teacher doesn’t
have a lot of choice. He or she has to lecture or give everybody the same assignment. But
if, for example, a teacher has 30 or 40 students, but each student has his own computer or
his own CD-ROM or his own video disk player, then the teacher can teach fractions one way
to one student, and another way to another student, and the teacher can also give the
student various ways of showing what he or she understands. So technology holds the
promise for personalising and individualising education much more than before. Why is this
important? Well, traditionally, education has really been a selection device. We say, who
is it who thinks a certain way, who can pass through the eye of a needle, we will give him
or her the awards and everybody else will be pushed to the side because they can’t do
things in that way. If we individualise or personalise education, it means that rather
than having one test for everyone to pass, you can have tests which are appropriate for a
person given his or her own intelligences. This means that each person can be advanced as
far as their own potential allows, not just everybody being forced to be like a certain
prototype, and if they can’t be like that prototype, then they just don’t have
an opportunity at all.
Question 3
How important could new technologies be for the development of personal intelligence?
Answer
In this day and age, every child should be introduced to computers, and they should be
introduced as naturally as possible. If the parents and the teachers use the computers,
almost every child will use them naturally. In fact, most of us who are of a certain age
and have children, have children teach us about the computers and not the reverse. So
computers are not problematic for most children. What’s more problematic is if the
parents and the teachers don’t use computers, then the child may not see the reason
for it. So it’s important that the computer be introduced in a natural way. What we
don’t want to do is to have computers substitute for other human beings. What
computers should do is to free other human beings to do the kinds of things which a
computer can’t do. A computer cannot hug you. You still have to be able to hug your
child. That’s an important part for the human being to play. Let’s say you do
have a child who’s not interested in computers. I wouldn’t worry about that,
unless the child was not interested in other things either. If the child was not
interested in anything, I’d think that was a real problem. But if a child is
interested in something nowadays, eventually he will become interested in computers,
because every part of life is affected by computers. So let’s say a child is
interested in musical instruments and not in computers, one day he’s going to want to
compose on the computer or compose electronic music or listen to music on a CD-ROM, and
then he’ll become interested in technology.
Question 4
What is your opinion of tele-education, teaching with the Internet and other media? Is
this going to replace the teacher or is it just another way of teaching?
Answer
Again, I feel that if you can use remote technologies to help you teach, of course you
should. There should be no point in having me repeat the same lecture 20 times if it can
be done by video-conferencing, or if it can be put on a CD-ROM. However, as is the case
with young children, there are all kinds of things which computers cannot do well with
students. Computers cannot introduce students to the world of work, they cannot provide
personal evaluations of students work, at least not nowadays. So I as a teacher use the
technology to free me for things which the computer technology can’t do. I do think
that technology is going to be very hard on those teachers who simply do things by
routine. Those teachers who just give the same boring lecture in the same way are going to
be replaced pretty soon by more interesting lectures that are sent from Rome or from
London or from Tokyo. So the pressure will be on teachers to go the extra step and to
provide exactly what it is that the computer can’t do.
I myself am a teacher, and I think the most important thing my students learn is to
watch me at work. To see how I handle visitors, to see how I investigate a research
problem, to see how I look at data and make sense of it. Those are the kinds of things
which would be impossible to duplicate using technology, though some of it could probably
be made into a simulation or into a small video segment.
Similarly, I think the technology is going to be very hard on the student who is lazy.
Because any answer which the computer can give, we don’t need to have from the
student. So the student is going to have to be more imaginative, more creative - again,
going the extra mile. So I think computers will keep us on our toes.
Question 5
President Clinton said that every school in the United States must be connected before the
year 2000. Is this enough for the education of future generations or, if it is not, what
do we need?
Answer
I think it’s a political slogan. It doesn’t cost him anything to say that. If
you asked me, would I rather have every school have the Internet connection or every
school have good teachers and a library, I would choose good teachers and a library.
Nonetheless, his point is appropriate. We’re living in a technological age, and
people do need to have contact with remote sites via the Internet, and so I wouldn’t
argue with what he’s saying, but it’s a political statement; it doesn’t
have much substance to it.
Question 6
So the problem is not the child having a computer but the teacher knowing how to teach
them to use the computer. We have to make new information available for the teacher
themselves, because otherwise we will have teachers that have no idea about computers.
Answer
It’s not just a question of teachers knowing how to log in - that’s simple to do
- or to show you how to get into the World Wide Web. The much more serious problem is that
the Internet is loaded with lots of information of very poor quality. Stuff that’s
wrong, poorly written, inappropriate, vulgar. It requires judgement to know what to
ignore, what to pay attention to, what’s well done, what’s poorly done and so
on. And those are questions of judgement, and that’s much more difficult than knowing
how to long in. It means helping you to discriminate. I always say that information is not
the same as knowledge, knowledge is not the same as judgement, and judgement is not the
same as wisdom. Eventually, we want people to be wise. The Internet is not going to help
make you wise. It might even make you foolish if you believe everything that’s on it.
But of course it’s the same with books. There are lots of books that are full of
nonsense, too. I think the difference is that to be able to publish a book costs a certain
amount of money. Now, anybody can put anything on the World Wide Web, and so there’s
going to be more crap available, and that means we’ll have to have better crap
detectors.
Question 7
From you experience, what’s the best age for a child to start using a computer?
Answer
I think most children who have computers around them will become interested in them as
soon as they can move a mouse around. But again, I wouldn’t worry if a child
didn’t. As long as the child was interested in other things, eventually the child
will find the computer interesting as well. Many parents worry terribly if their child is
3, 4, 5, 6 years of age and isn’t computer literate. I think that’s a foolish
worry. I would worry a lot more if he doesn’t like to go outside and play with other
children or climb trees or go on a seesaw or want to go to the zoo or watch you in the
kitchen. The reason why this is so foolish to worry about this is that every few years
computers change totally anyway. Ten years ago everybody said we must teach children how
to program. That’s what LOGO was all about. Now, nobody says that any more. So
parents should use their own judgement and not be freaked out just because the child
isn’t spending all of his time with the mouse.
Question 8
But the Internet could give some problems. Is there an age when you can safely use
Internet and is there a way to safely surf on the Internet?
Answer
I think that it’s important for parents not to just put the child in a room with the
computer and leave them alone. Just like you shouldn’t put the child in a room with
the television set and leave them alone. And of course once the child can read books, you
probably don’t want the child to read everything just because the child knows how to
read. I guess the Internet is somewhat more seductive. There are very interesting visuals
on it. Children are more likely to do it together than read a book together. But ever
since there have been parents and a Garden of Eden, there were dangerous things around,
and the parents who let the child completely on their own had children who got into
trouble. The parents who not only cared but showed that they have standards in their own
life have much less to worry about. Still, I do think that children always have secrets
from their parents, and probably just like a good parent shouldn’t assume the child
is not smoking or not taking drugs, I think the good parent shouldn’t just assume the
child is not in an illicit chat room. I think one has to keep close contact with children.
But taboo subjects are nothing new. In America we now label television programs as being
at risk for children. They’ve found that as soon as the children learn about this,
they want to go and see those programs, so simply to put up an announcement doesn’t
solve the problem.
Question 9
So, do you agree or disagree with parental control of programs and censorship on the
Internet? Should we put a lock on the sites that a child should not see?
Answer
I certainly believe in parental control. But it’s probably not going to be possible
to lock all the sites. Every day people are going to put new things on the Net, and so you
have to depend to some extent on the judgement of the people who produce these systems,
and you have to depend to some extent on your child’s own good sense of something
that he should stay away from. And that means that your own personal value system is very
important. I know that I happen to be unable to deal with any kind of violence in the
media. I find it very upsetting, but I can’t prevent my children, who are interested
in the violence, from watching it. But I think the fact that they see that I recoil from
that, that I find it repulsive, I think that does make an impression on them. But you have
to have enough faith in your child that he’s not going to be destroyed just because
he sees something vulgar on the Internet. After all, somebody might get murdered right in
the next house. You cannot stop these kinds of things. You have to deal with them when
they come up, help children understand them. If the child does something wrong, you tell
them so, but then you go on. You don’t make a huge issue out of it.
Question 10
Information today goes much faster than in the past. Due to the new media we receive much
more input than our fathers did. How can this affect our intelligence?
Answer
Well, actually it’s not widely known but even measured IQ has gone up steadily in
this century. It goes up a few points each decade, so that in the last 40 years the IQ of
the public all over the world has gone up 10 or 15 points. That’s quite interesting.
And I think the explanation is that more people are going to school, and school makes you
smarter. So, to the extent that people are exposed to even more information over a longer
period of their lives, not just in school, I suppose that we can say that people will get
smarter. But so much depends upon the quality of the information on the Internet. The more
television you watch, the more depressed you get, the more fatigued you get, because most
of the material on television is terrible. If the material on television was as good a
quality as this program, then maybe people would get smarter if they watched television
all the time.
So similarly, it’s both the quality of the material on the Internet and the use
that you make of it. I think that’s what’s key. You could read every newspaper
in the world and end up being totally confused, because the Palestinian newspaper says a
different thing from the Israeli newspaper, and the Japanese newspaper says a different
thing from the Italian newspaper. And so it’s a question of deciding what to pay
attention to and why, what to make part of your mind and what to push away. I think the
Internet will place a greater responsibility on individuals to make those kinds of
judgements. Also, it’s quite obvious that with the speed of change in the world and
with the pouring out of new information, people are going to have to continue to learn in
a much more systematic way throughout their lives, otherwise they will not be employable
and they will not be able to talk to and deal with their neighbours. So when people are
talking about an educated society or a society for education, they aren’t just using
a slogan, they’re describing a world which I don’t think is going to change in
our lifetime.
All of the premium in the future is going to be for people who realise that knowing how
to learn is important, knowing how to use the new technologies is essential, knowing how
to discriminate between the good and bad is important, knowing what to keep and what to
kick out. And then perhaps the most difficult part is having peripheral vision, that is,
of all the things going on in the world, technology and knowing which sorts of things are
likely to point to the future and which sorts of things are pointing to the past. This is
not to say that tradition is bad. In fact, I’m a great believer in tradition and I
don’t think that new things mean we should eliminate tradition. However, talking
about something like the Catholic Church, which is a very traditional institution, if the
Catholic Church were ignorant about the Web, it would be a disaster for the church. So you
must be aware of the new media and the new technologies, but you can never let them tell
you what your basic beliefs and values should be.
Question 11
A rich child will use the Internet and other new technologies and a poor one will not.
Will they develop different intelligences or will they have the same chances?
Answer
Well, I think the reason that President Clinton is calling for an Internet in every school
is because he knows that otherwise the children who have this at home will have an
advantage over those that have it in school. Clearly, when a new tool is invented, whether
it’s a pencil or a car or a computer, those people who have access to the tool have
an advantage over those people that don’t. This doesn’t mean that if you
can’t write, you can’t achieve a lot in the world: I know people who are
illiterate who are very successful. It doesn’t mean that if you can’t drive, you
can’t be very successful in the world: I know people who can’t drive who are
very successful. Similarly, you could be unable to use the new technologies and still be
able to do very well, but on average, obviously it’s good to know how to use the
pencil, how to drive a car and how to use a computer. And anybody who says it’s not
important, I’d like to see them keep the computer away from their own children.
I’m sure they wouldn’t, because it is clearly an important part of what life is
going to be like from now on.
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