A single score, and a theory that would not stay with it

In the modern school the account sketches, students were measured by IQ. They sat timed tests of mathematics, shapes, and logic, and received a relative score on a normal curve with 100 as the average — it also mentions a standard deviation of 15 or 24, as the older tests were scored. High scores drew praise; scores below 100 could draw mockery. Then came a fair question: can a mind be judged only by a math problem? People are gifted in art, in literature, in writing, in sport. Those gifts, the criticism went, should be allowed into what we call intelligence. Howard Gardner's theory was born in that argument.

People, on this view, hold several kinds of intelligence at once. The kinds work independently, and they can be trained. A person may lose language after an injury and still keep music or number. What a culture values can also shape which kinds develop. The point is not a new ranking. It is a way of seeing a student's strengths, and of helping those strengths grow in a school that now asks for creativity, openness, and work across subjects.

Nine kinds of mind, three asks of school, and a reply to critics

It lists nine. Linguistic intelligence makes persuasion, negotiation, and the carrying of information possible, and is needed by politicians and writers. Logical-mathematical intelligence calculates, tests a proposition, infers, and finds a pattern, and is needed by mathematicians and engineers. Spatial intelligence perceives space and forms an image, and is needed by artists and inventors. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence expresses a goal with the body; musical intelligence hears musical elements with care. Interpersonal intelligence reads another person's thoughts and feelings; intrapersonal intelligence sees one's own strengths and weaknesses. Naturalist intelligence spots likeness and difference quickly. Existential intelligence, which does not appear in everyone and is often left off the list, shows mainly in philosophers and religious people. None of these outranks the others.

Three implications follow. Intelligence as problem-solving turns teaching toward life, and the writer wants a narrow exam-subject diet revised. Expanding the map to nine gives sport and art the same dignity as language and mathematics; that in Britain and the United States, school sport and art have fed adult cultures of movement and making. And if intelligence can change, school has a reason to believe in every student's potential. Critics have called musical intelligence a talent, and the theory untested. Gardner's reply, as the account records it, is that the public idea of intelligence is trapped in 'being clever,' and that the theory was built from earlier studies, in a form hard to test in a lab. The starting point it wants is simple: every student already has a strength. It does not turn the theory into Maslow.

Sources

1. Howard Gardner's multiple-intelligence theory, the nine intelligences, and their implications for school, including criticisms and Gardner's replies.

Last updated: 14 November 2026