To Stream or Not to Stream: Academic Tracking and Benefits of an MI-based Approach

Contributed by Annie Stachura and Branton Shearer, in response to Ahmadie Thaha

Over the years, we’ve received many suggestions for how to use the concept of multiple intelligences in the classroom. These proposals arrive in our inbox from all over the world; they often present us with new contexts, and thus, new lenses for considering what interventions might support student learning and achievement in different arenas. We try our best to lend a helpful ear to these correspondents—to acknowledge their hard work and offer support and guidance where we can.

Recently, we read a thoughtful piece that appeared in KBA News, titled Reborned Academic Streams: Reviving the Stigma. Columnist Ahmadie Thaha takes issue with a new policy being contemplated by Indonesia’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology. As described, this policy reinstates academic tracking or “streaming”—requiring high school students to select and stick to one area of study, effectively narrowing their future career path.

The policy clashes with the still-nascent “Merdeka Curriculum” (meaning “the freedom curriculum”)—a recently developed framework that prioritizes flexibility, individuation, long-term growth, and comprehensive development in the classroom. Critics of the Merdeka Curriculum worry that this freedom can beget confusion for students, who may ultimately end up in the “wrong” field due to indecision, lack of knowledge of their areas of strength, and/or societal pressures. As described, The Ministry of Education’s new academic streaming policy seeks to resolve these concerns.

Logo for Indonesia’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology

Thaha criticizes the restrictive policy-in-progress and warns of its consequences. He quips: “It’s like saying, ‘Because so many people choose the wrong life partner, marriage will now be assigned by the neighborhood head.’”

Thaha puts forth an alternative way of determining a student’s strengths: an interest and aptitude assessment he’s designed based around multiple intelligences. 90 “Yes/No” questions aim at yielding a reasonably accurate map of a student’s various potentials. In addition, rather than yielding an inflexible stream, the assessment should be used in conjunction with structured observation to curate personalized learning strategies and help students gain insight into their own skills and possible vocations. Thaha asserts that this type of support system would be well-worth the time and effort it would take to implement.

The article concludes with a moving call-to-action from Thaha:

We’re not against structure—we oppose lazy structure. We’re not anti-tracking—we’re anti-boxing. If students need a framework, let’s provide one. But it should be flexible—less like a Victorian corset that restricts breathing, more like an adaptable map.

Tracking should be a guide, not a hammer. Let science students study sociology, let social studies kids peek into math. The world isn’t as black-and-white as our textbooks.

We found this essay thoughtful and well-considered, and believe it put forward concrete ideas about assessment and how it could help with educational and vocational planning.

To get his take, we consulted with our colleague Branton Shearer. Branton is a researcher who many years ago developed the MIDAS (Multiple Intelligences Developmental Assessment Scales). This instrument assesses the range of intelligences in students and, upon request, connects the findings to study and career options. We shared Ahmadie Thaha’s pieces for KBA News with Branton, and here’s what he had to say:

Branton Shearer

I am writing to lend my support and experience to Ahmadie Thaha’s suggestion that Indonesia adopt a multiple intelligences inspired approach to their Merdeka Curriculum. Guiding students through their education to a successful adult role and career path is a daunting task. There are no simple answers. Parents are the primary guides along with other family members, traditionally; but school personnel can be crucial. This is especially true in our high-tech digital information era when the jobs of tomorrow may look very different from what their parents do today.

[...]

I observed firsthand the benefits of using an MI assessment to guide middle school students (13+ years old) as they prepared to enter high school. Students completed an MI inventory (www.MIResearch.org) and were given short lists of jobs / careers matched to their top two MI strengths. They were encouraged to choose an 8 hour Career Shadowing Experience matched to a combination of their strengths. At the end of the program, students who did this were overwhelmingly more likely to have a satisfying positive experience and gain self-insight into potential career paths.

This finding was echoed during a 10-year project with undeclared university students who were confused about their major course of study. Every semester 75% or more of students reported that learning about their MI profiles enhanced both self-understanding and the fit with career requirements. Useful college courses to promote skill development were also highlighted.

The multiple intelligences have been called “the brain’s tool kit” and every brain is uniquely configured. We all have our particular strengths and limitations that can change given time and attention. Research has found that adults may have several distinct careers over the course of a lifetime so it makes sense to educate students about their own “MI Tool Kit” that can be employed to achieve success in an array of professions. The eight intelligences are much more than mere hobbies or enjoyable talents.

Another advantage of MI is that it provides a common-sense language to describe “thinking-in-everyday-life”, classrooms, and on-the-job. The MI terms can be scaled to fit across the lifespan and situation. As Thaha states, an MI profile used for career planning can also be employed by classroom teachers (and parents) to promote academic achievement. An MI profile is truly a multi-purpose power tool.

That’s the good news. One has to concede there are frequently barriers and difficulties integrating MI into a traditional school program. The retrofitting process can be perilous. It takes resilient and creative leadership to make it happen and then to sustain it.

The Indonesian government is to be commended for focusing the attention of their Department of Education on helping young people to gain career awareness and direction. [...] An MI assessment can be a powerful framework to inform a “dialogue of discovery” among the student, parents and classroom performance. The goals of this collaborative conversation are to deepen self-understanding (intrapersonal intelligence) and awareness of the skills that successful professionals use (interpersonal) and select the next best steps. From this dialogue a career development plan can emerge with a high probability of success.  

This is not always a quick or easy process. Only the lucky few know at a young age what their career path will entail and how to stick to it. For the majority of us, it is a constant adventure that zigs and zags through life. When we coach young people with a deep and realistic MI profile there will be fewer dead ends, higher intrinsic motivation and many benefits to society in the long run.

Concluding Thoughts

In agreement with Ahmadie Thaha and Branton Shearer, we hope that the Indonesian government will reconsider implementing its policy to reintroduce academic streams, which limit students’ ability to explore various subjects. As Thaha writes, this new system will not only cause stress to pick the “right” career far too early on for most, but also prevent students from gaining knowledge in diverse arenas and—in the process—becoming interdisciplinary individuals, capable of excelling in more than just one field.

MI Assessments of the sort endorsed by Thaha and Shearer would help students identify their interests and strengths and choose fitting subjects and careers, much better than standardized testing can. However, for a few reasons, it’s important to be cautious about self-assessment:

1. There is no reason to believe that most people, especially young students still developing their senses of selves, have particular insights into their own strengths;

2. Most persons do not understand the differences between what you like to do (preferences), what you are interested in, and how powerful your computational capacities are. Only the latter indicates the strength of an intelligence.

This being said, we recognize the desire for some kind of instrument—such as the one proposed by Thaha, or the MIDAS process. And we do see the benefits of using data, particularly when discussing with policy-makers the pros and cons of different curricular and assessment options.  

We recommend a system that relies heavily on triangulation—that is, using more than one source of data. For example, if individuals rate themselves on their intelligences, but one also obtains ratings from those who know them well (family, friends, present and former teachers), the profile of intelligences would be more reliable.

The gold standard consists of performance measurements: in this type of assessment, you have the opportunity to demonstrate your intelligence profile and not just testify to it. As examples: Assess interpersonal intelligences by observing how a person handles a conflict situation or motivates others to pursue a certain course of action. Assess spatial intelligence by seeing how quickly a person masters an unfamiliar geographical terrain and how accurately he or she remembers it. 

If Thaha’s suggestion of an MI-based assessment were implemented, flexibility is imperative so that students don’t become “trapped” in one path. In general, we believe that a broad liberal arts education (as long practiced in Western countries) focused on nurturing students’ interdisciplinary potentials strengths are more valuable than those that pipeline students—“from cradle to grave.” 

RESOURCES SHARED BY BRANTON SHEARER

Research and application reports on MI and The MIDAS assessment: https://miresearch.org/midas-archives/research/research-reports-papers/

Shearer, C. B. (2001). Enhancing a Career Exploration Program for 8th Grade Students with an Assessment for the Multiple Intelligences. Presented at AERA Annual Conference in Seattle, WA on April 12, 2001. Republished on ERIC. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED452212.pdf

Shearer, C. B., Luzzo, D. (2009). Exploring the application of multiple intelligences theory to career counseling.  Career Development Quarterly. 58, 1, 3 – 13. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-0045.2009.tb00169.x     

Shearer, C. B. (2011). Exploring the relationship between intrapersonal intelligence and university students’ career confusion: Implications for counseling, academic success, and school-to-career transition. Journal of Employment Counseling, 46, 52-61. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1920.2009.tb00067.x

The Conversation that I Wish I’d Had with Leonard Bernstein

Howard Gardner © 2025

When I—as a promising young pianist—was growing up in Scranton Pennsylvania in the 1950s, there was no figure in contemporary classical music who was as salient, as charismatic, as Leonard Bernstein (almost always called his nickname “Lenny.”) Lenny was already legendary: he had become an instant celebrity in 1943 when on a few hours notice, he had skillfully conducted the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Lenny was a composer of serious classical music; the brilliant creator of the scores for West Side Story and On the Waterfront; the much acclaimed conductor of the “New York Phil;” and an educator in the arts without equal. Millions of young people, including me, looked forward on Saturday morning television to his introductions to the world of classical music.

Also, as I grew older, I sensed personal ties. Like me, Lenny was Jewish and proudly so. He attended Harvard College (as did I) at a time when not many Jews had been admitted. He was also sympathetic to left-wing causes and critical of authoritarian regimes. In the mid-1970s, at the height of his unequaled career, he returned to Harvard to give the prestigious Charles Eliot Norton lectures—where he sought to analyze classical music using the linguistic theories of Noam Chomsky. I eagerly attended his lectures. And then, after the final lecture, I was privileged to be invited with a small group of friends and colleagues to a conversation with “Maestro.” Without question, he was the star—and he acted as one might have expected. Probably too intimidated to say anything substantive, let alone argumentative, I did engage in a brief conversation with him—though I would be amazed if it made any impression on him whatsoever.

Bernstein did not take good care of himself physically—to put it mildly—and he died too early, at the age of 72. A year or two before his death, he performed Brahms’ First Symphony at Tanglewood— the greatest live performance that I’d ever heard—perhaps of any major symphony. And it turned out that Joseph Horowitz, a classical music critic for The New York Times agreed with that evaluation.

Sadly, today most young people know of Bernstein only through the recent sensational biopic Maestro. (Alas, that’s the way that posterity will remember most personalities—JFK, Churchill—and most events—Pearl Harbor, The Titanic, 9/11.)

Little did I ever expect that I was linked to Leonard Bernstein in another way. In turns out that shortly before his death, Bernstein gave a rare lengthy interview to Jonathan Cott, a journalist quite knowledgeable about classical music. Among the many things Bernstein mentioned, was this:

“In an essay entitled ‘Children’s Conceptions (and Misconceptions) of the Arts,’ the psychologist Howard Gardner wrote: ‘We would not expect children to learn to understand computers by having them examine a terminal or a printout. Yet that is the way we expect the young to become sensitive to ballet, theater, and the visual arts. Schools bus them to plays and museums; Leonard Bernstein offers youth concerts on television; and somehow artistic understanding is supposed to result.’ And Gardner doesn’t seem to believe that it will. But, as I said in the six lectures I gave at Harvard University in 1973 [published in the book The Unanswered Question], all kids are born with a language and a musical competence. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to account for a two-year-old child’s saying, ‘I like the green ice cream better’ in any language, whether it’s in Swahili or in Dutch. Every child can say it in the language of its parents—'I like the green ice cream better.’ That’s the Pentecostal alphabet I was speaking about before—the letters of fire that God gave us. The greatest gift he could give man was the ability to talk and communicate. And a big part of communication is music. 

Every kid is born with a sense of rhythm and has the ability to tune in on the overtone series. It’s part of the air we breathe, part of our bodies. The harmonic series is in everybody—the octave, the fifth, the fourth, the third, the major and minor seconds. This is provable through physical principles. An infant knows the interval of an octave because his or her mother sings a note or a melody one octave higher than the father does. And every kid knows the fifth, and every kid knows the first two different overtones of the harmonic series. In every country of the world, kids tease each other with the same tune: nya-nya, nya-nya—the first two different overtones of the harmonic series. And every child is born with the knowledge of one-two, one-two—he has two hands, two feet, two eyes, he knows two nipples in his mother’s breasts, he breathes in and out, he knows up and down, left and right, and he can march: toddle-toddle, toddle-toddle!”

This blog introduces my first mea culpa. Foolishly and unnecessarily, I had “put down” the very young persons’ concerts from which I – and countless others—had gained so much. I had been searching for examples of “one night stands” in the arts—attending ONE art exhibit, participating in ONE dance, attending ONE concert. Unless the child is unusually gifted or has prior interests and inclinations that are consonant with that single exposure, it’s unlikely to have much effect…let alone any long-term impact. But of course, Lenny’s Saturday morning shows were designed to be seen as a whole series—and not as a one-shot exposure. A poorly selected and insufficiently articulated example on my part. No doubt there are scattered examples of young people who are inspired by a single powerful artistic experience—“chance favors the prepared mind.”

On the other hand: Bernstein was actually dwelling on another one of his favorite points—one brought up frequently over the course of the Cott Conversations. And that is his theory of cognitive development—a field in which I do have expertise. Bernstein wanted to expound—indeed to glorify—the mind and spirit of every child: openness to new experiences; willingness to play (physically or mentally) with whatever information is presented; often a keen memory for sensory and motor experiences; a desire to create, to build upon, whatever information proves enticing.

In the best of all worlds, Bernstein’s depiction has validity. As so many developmental psychologists have demonstrated, the minds—and the brains—of young children are amazing entities. But two qualifying points are necessary:

Bernstein with wife Felicia Montealegre and two of their children

1. Most children throughout the world and throughout history were not born and raised in supportive conditions—and so the ideal just sketched is unlikely to be realized. Bernstein may well have had in mind his own three children—who had heredity (their mother was an internationally acclaimed singer), environment, historical era, and location (the upper West side of Manhattan) on their side.

2. There are profound individual differences in cognitive profiles. While even children who are hearing-impaired can gain something from music or dance, not every child has—or can develop—a notable musical intelligence. Indeed, I’ve been married to two women—both of them far more artistic than I am or could ever be—but neither of them was able to carry or recognize a familiar tune. And while Leonard Bernstein’s concerts might well have appealed to them, they would likely not have benefited from them in the way that I (and others with ampler amounts of musical intelligence) could and did.

Being immigrants who had escaped from Nazi Germany in the nick of time, my parents had no money and no time for the arts. But when I was five years old, we visited a family in the neighborhood, and I simply began to pick out tunes on the piano. A parent in that family said “You must buy a piano for Howard!”—and so my parents scrounged up $30 (yes, thirty dollars!), bought an upright piano, and supported my piano lessons for the next six years—at which time, I stopped formal lessons but continued to play, and even to teach piano for decades. So, I was the kind of child that Lenny had in mind—but he universalized “musical intelligence” in a way that was aspirational rather than typical.

Lenny is long dead, and I am well into my ninth decade. We’ll not be able to continue this conversation, but thanks to the internet, I’ve at least had the chance to respond to one of my lifelong heroes.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For comments on an earlier version of this blog, I thank Shinri Furuzawa, Annie Stachura, and Ellen Winner.

REFERENCES

Bernstein, L. (1976). The unanswered question: Six talks at Harvard. Harvard University Press.

Cott, J. (2013). Dinner with Lenny: The last long interview with Leonard Bernstein. Oxford University Press.

Horowitz, J. (1985, July 22). Music at Tanglewood: Bernstein and Brahms. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/22/arts/music-at-tanglewood-bernstein-and-brahms.html

Is there a Historical Intelligence? 1066, 1776, and all that…

Howard Gardner © 2025

When we think about objects and events, certain ways of organizing and remembering these entities come into play. Presumably, most of us store experiences as being pleasant or unpleasant, recent or remote, blurry or detailed. Most of us also recall experiences visually—sometimes vaguely, sometimes in detail—though of course we might also recall such experiences with a soundtrack or even, as per Proust’s madeleine cookie at tea time, via taste or odor.

These modes of experiencing and remembering draw on our basic sensory and basic emotional equipment—and have probably been consistent and reliable for most of our existence as homo sapiens—perhaps even as members of the primate order.

But in more recent times, other ways of coding, organizing, and recalling experiences have come to the fore. In this essay, as one who has long pondered the nature of human intelligences, I consider whether it makes sense to postulate a historical intelligence—what it is, how it may work, whether it is worth inculcating, and if so, how best to establish and strengthen historical intelligence.

 Two challenging thoughts immediately come to mind:

• First, what’s the “Father of Multiple Intelligences” up to? Having suggested and provided the evidence for the seven multiple intelligences over forty years ago—and then reluctantly adding an eighth intelligence (the naturalist intelligence three decades ago)—why should I suddenly propose yet another intelligence, and thereby open up a Pandora’s box?

• Second, don’t we who live in the so-called West actually have an answer to this question? Specifically, weren’t the Greeks first to create and then to model the practice of historical thinking and writing? And for the title of first historians, isn’t there a competition between Herodotus (c. 484 – c. 425 BC) author of the primary historical text detailing the Greco-Persian Wars, titled History of the Great Persian War) and Thucydides (c. 460 – 400 BC) author of History of the Peloponnesian War? And if so, am I merely picking an accident—indeed two chronological or historical accidents! —and promoting it as yet another intelligence?

Indeed, falling into that trap, couldn’t we then simply add philosophical intelligence? Scientific intelligence? And other capacities usually attributed to Greek thinkers over two millennia ago, or more recently, to European thinkers in the Renaissance? Or to their counterparts in Chinese, Indian, or Arab cultures? Or even in pre-literate cultures?

So warned—and accordingly: I will proceed with caution.

In proposing a historical intelligence, I have in mind the major matrix or organizing principle which individuals may impose on events, personalities, movements, crises, and opportunities. 

Let’s take the two dates cited in the title. For nearly everyone in English society, the date 1066 denotes the year in which the Duke of Normandy (later dubbed William the Conqueror) invaded and conquered the British Isles. For nearly everyone in American society, the date 1776 is the time when the American colonies declared independence from the British Isles and throne—and when, as a powerful date-mark, this declaration was signed on July 4.

For many, perhaps most individuals who can correct identify these dates, they are simply that—there are no other associations. But for those with the hypothesized “historical intelligence,” all sorts of other associations come to mind: What were things like before these canonical dates? What happened immediately thereafter, and can one assign a date (and a probability) to it? With respect to The Colonies, one may cite the Boston Tea Party 1773, Paul Revere’s ride and the siege of Concord 1775, Washington’s crossing the Delaware in the waning days of 1776, the surrender of Cornwallis 1781, the Articles of Confederation 1783? Or to put on a British spin, what was the time of Alfred the Great (and did he really exist?) The knights of the round table? When was the succession of Henrys, including Henry IV and V of Shakespearean plays? Or Henry the VIII (with his multiple wives) or his daughter, the first Queen of England? Or the Magna Carta (whose date of 1215 may resemble the venerated date of 1863—Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.)

Hey, wait a second! Perhaps this is not historical intelligence, but just a good memory for dates—a suitable contestant for Jeopardy!, a possible member of Mensa, but no greater virtue or capacity.

I would decline these diminishing proposals. A memory for dates and for chronology is certainly a prerequisite for a postulated historical intelligence—and those who lack such a memory must either consult a history book (or a website) frequently or consign themselves to the historical dustbin.

So, what transmutes a good memory for dates and names to the status of an operating historical capacity, whether or not one determines to dub it an intelligence? A good short answer is that the names and dates serve as an organizing matrix for the historical intelligence—or perhaps to be less tendentious, a historical way of thinking.

Thinking historically yokes the memory for dates/names to an assumption that there are larger forces at work that contribute to—and perhaps dictate—what actually happened in a landmark year—1066, 1776, 1789 (French Revolution) or 1861 (American Civil War) or 1917 (Russian Revolution) or 1949 (Chinese Communist takeover).

Because, of course, these titanic events did not just happen to happen when they happened. There were larger forces at work—economic (privileged classes, wealth disparity, inflation and bubbles burst), political (struggles among rival leaders, elections, emerging legal systems) military (new weapons, outmoded or inappropriate weapons, armies, navies, air forces, generals and admirals), religious (new religions struggling against established ones, religious or quasi-religious leaders, predictions from sacred texts, icons and iconoclasts). One could also add scientific breakthroughs or ideological innovations and clashes—and looking to our present moment, the decline of traditional media and the eruption of new media.

From pointing to too narrow a focus (merely remembering chronological landmarks), I’ve shifted to a large—perhaps almost endless—litany of forces which somehow combine to make things happen in a certain way, or to keep things from happening (in what one now calls counter-historical thinking: what might have been—e.g. had the French king and queen escaped to another country in 1789; or had Mikhail Gorbachev not become the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985 or had Franklin Roosevelt lost the 1940 election to an isolationist like Charles Lindbergh).

I believe that we have come close to the center of historical thinking—or to play this game out, to a delineation of a possible historical intelligence. Against a ready capacity to remember (or to access) calendrical information, the individual with a historical flair—a historical way of thinking—or, if you will allow—the individual with a hypothesized historical intelligence monitors and readily accesses what was happening in a certain society and at a certain time and comes up with a plausible account thereof, including what came before and what ensued thereafter.

And if that person (or group) has extraordinary talents and/or extraordinary ambition, they can actually survey different parts of the world or different times and come up with plausible comparisons and generalizations—such were the aims of historical polymaths Arnold J. Toynbee to Oswald Spengler a century ago…and, no doubt, their successors in our time.

Yet, in the end, I want to introduce a note of caution:

The Marriage of Figaro (opera)

Nearly all of us can come up with other ways of thinking about events and personalities—that’s why we have created scholarly disciplines, arts, and crafts. (It’s been claimed that The Marriage of Figaro—a play by Beaumarchais, an opera by Mozart and da Ponte—prompted the French Revolution. Well, perhaps it was a tiny pebble on the scale—but, certainly, it was not a fundamental factor.)

The individual (or group) with a postulated historical intelligence imposes such a matrix readily and proficiently on the range of events and personalities. Moreover, those who want to enter the ranks of professional historians need to compete with some success with other accounts proposed by other historians. That’s why we have departments, indeed faculties of history.

And indeed, when a new tool (like cliometrics or artificial intelligence) or a new focus (like the histories of underrepresented demographic minorities or sectors) comes to the fore, the alert historian attempts to assimilate or integrate these perspectives into an overarching (though not grandiose) historical account.

Conclusion

Having spent decades probing the possibility of various intelligences, I do not want simply to assert or add a historical intelligence. Having once opened such a Pandora’s box, I could not in good mind or conscience deny the existence of a philosophical intelligence, a biological intelligence, a geographical intelligence and so on.

Instead, it makes more sense, in my view, to stick to the building blocks of the original eight intelligences. But what we can do is to postulate intelligences in various domains and disciplines—like those just named—and then scrutinize how the eight established intelligences contribute to the effective deployment of disciplinary intelligences.

The Case of Donald Trump: Ponderings of a Cognitive Psychologist

Howard Gardner © 2024

From my earliest years, I’ve been interested in the human mind—well before I’d even heard the word “psychology,” let alone the field of cognitive psychology. Once I’d learned about this area of study, I devoted several decades to it, trying to understand the dimensions of human cognition. I’ve written many books—at least half of which contain the word “mind” in the title. And while I am best known for the theory of multiple intelligences, I’ve also studied the minds of leaders, the minds of creators, and the minds of synthesizers.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Like most of my academic colleagues, I’ve been bewildered by Donald Trump’s amazing success in holding the attention of the public and gaining its support in now three presidential election cycles.

So allow me to apply my own psychological lens to the case of Donald Trump and indicate where I have come to realize that it falls short.

Intelligences

Clearly, Trump has enough linguistic intelligence to speak with reasonable coherence for hours, and enough logical-mathematical intelligence to compete—and sometimes win—in the areas of real estate and finance. In that sense, he is a traditionally smart person and would presumably do well on IQ tests.

However, he is extremely ambivalent about this state of affairs. On the one hand, he brags about his own intelligence and even more about the intellect of his uncle who apparently taught for many years at MIT. But on the other hand, Trump has also declared: “I love the poorly educated.” There’s little evidence that he reads carefully and thoughtfully—or even that he is a very good business-person rather than an extremely clever manipulator of the real-estate system in various venues.

As for other intelligences: I think Trump gets fairly high grades for bodily-kinesthetic intelligence—he moves around easily and is a regular presence on the golf course. At his rallies, he plays and enjoys music—sometimes swaying back-and-forth—and so presumably he has reasonable musical intelligence.

He could not mesmerize (and sometimes manipulate) crowds, nor do well in bargaining if he did not have exceptional interpersonal intelligence. In thinking about crowds, there’s a relevant scholarly tradition dating back to Gustave Le Bon’s classic work on The Crowd (original publication 1895). Whether it is Le Bon's crowd of the 19th century or David Riesman's "lonely crowd" of the mid-20th century—crowds are not known for their intellectual strength. Indeed, they often seem to reflect a lowest common denominator. Of course we don’t know how—or even whether—behaviors in the crowd translate to decisions at the ballet box.

Adlai Stevenson II

As for intrapersonal intelligence—understanding of oneself—I see scant evidence of that in Trump. But this type of intelligence is not particularly important for an American politician. Ronald Reagan had little apparent intrapersonal intelligence, and on most criteria, he was an extremely successful candidate and president. In contrast, twice-Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson was very introspective but failed to do well in the polls.

And so, from my multiple-intelligences perspective, Donald Trump does perfectly well.

What about as a political leader?

In my studies, I’ve concluded that effective leaders exhibit two properties: they tell stories convincingly and they embody those stories in their own lives.

Dylan Stewart/AP Photo

No doubt Trump is a masterful storyteller. For instance, he communicates effectively what it’s like to be hounded by legal authorities and what it means to be a “real American” and to “Make America Great.” Of course, many of us doubt that the Trump personal story is valid. But, as reporter Daniel Schorr once quipped: “Sincerity: if you can fake it, you've got it made.”

CREATIVITY

We can accept that Trump is a successful leader, but would one want to credit him with having a creative mind?

On my definition, creators are individuals who come up with a set of ideas or products, capture the attention of relevant audiences, and whose creations eventually change the way in which members of their respective audiences perceive the world. Think Albert Einstein, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, The Beatles. Often, these creators master the symbol system or medium of their time, drawing on it and sculpting it successfully.

A few years ago, I would never have thought of Donald Trump as creative. But he clearly has mastered a variety of social media, as well as aspects of traditional print and broadcast media. He’s done so successfully—the way that Franklin Roosevelt did with radio in the 1930s, John F. Kennedy did with television in the early 1960s, and Barack Obama did with the Internet of 2008.

In some ways—and I hope I’m not fooling myself—my own work as a cognitive psychologist does help to explain Donald Trump’s electoral success in the United States in the first quarter of the 21st century. Indeed, back in 2015, I credited him with “media intelligence,” and I would underscore that characterization today. Yet at the same time, I admit—indeed, stress—that the tools of cognitive psychology fail to illuminate adequately the Trump phenomenon.

My late friend Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi—renowned for his concept of “flow”—once quipped to me: “Howard, cognition is the easy part—the challenge is to understand motivation.”

I think Mihaly was right. But I would edit his comment as follows: “Both motivation and personality are far more difficult to understand and to apply to phenomena than is cognition—my own preferred perspective.”

When Mihaly made that comment, we were still in an age where artificial intelligence was primitive—and no one had conceived of ChatGPT or other large language instruments. Now, of course, these instruments are as multiply-intelligent as any human being—or, indeed, as a cluster of highly multiply-intelligent humans.

If we were to attempt to provide a rounded explanation of the astounding success of Donald Trump, cognitive psychology alone would not suffice. Instead, we would have to explore:

1. The nature of human personality: both Trump’s unusual personality profile—as explained by his niece Mary and other psychologically-oriented analysts—as well as;

2. The motivations of half the American voting public. Even after (or, perhaps, especially after) having observed him in and out of office for a decade and in and out of multiple courtrooms—many still support him. Indeed, many continue to lionize him.

At least for now, the tools of the cognitivist do not suffice—we will have to combine cognition, personality, and motivation—a challenge for the synthesizing mind. And even though I’ve studied synthesis for decades, I still would never have predicted the amazing success of Donald Trump.

Final thought

As some readers of these lines may know, for over thirty years, my colleagues and I have studied “Good Work” and good citizenship—what it means to lead lives that are moral and ethical. Donald Trump does not exemplify either of those virtues. How and why cognition can be mobilized for the range of human virtues and vices—perhaps that’s a challenge better left to dramatists.

The Pendulum of Educational Progress

By Thomas R. Hoerr

Progress is rarely smooth on important and complex issues. Steps forward are followed by steps backwards, and we can hope (we must hope!) that the forward steps are longer than those in retreat. This is certainly the case when considering an incredibly complex and very relevant issue, the definition of intelligence. Despite resistance to change, new understandings about child development, growth, and intellect must push against decades of traditional thinking and comfortable practices.

New City School, St Louis, Missouri – an MI school

We saw this tension in the 1980s when Frames Of Mind: the theory of Multiple Intelligences was first published. Multiple intelligences (MI) redefined–expanded–the traditional view of intelligence as a single entity that could be determined by a score on a test. Although Howard Gardner wrote about MI with psychologists in mind, it was elementary and secondary educators who embraced this new way of understanding students’ abilities and potential. Instead of assessing students to determine a hierarchy of intelligence by asking, “Who’s the smartest?” the question became “How is each child smart?” This expanded definition of intelligence valued problem solving skills and abilities in art, music, athletics, nature, working with others, and knowing oneself. A pragmatic approach to intelligence, MI captured the range of abilities that can lead to success in life.

Visiting Hamilton High School in Hamilton, Ohio, Jan. 8, 2002, President George W. Bush signs into law the "No Child Left Behind Act." (Wikimedia)

The impact of MI in a school was powerful. I know this from working in an MI school. Recognizing MI, educators began to reconsider curriculum and pedagogy in ways which enabled students to use all of their intelligences in solving problems; students learned and they learned with joy.

But then the U.S. Congress passed No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation in 2001. This meant that student success on standardized tests–which focused only on the linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences–became the criterion for measuring achievement; failure to excel on standardized measures threatened jobs and the viability of schools. This narrow pathway to success ignored the intelligences and passions of many students; it told them that they weren’t smart. There was–and is–much pushback by K-12 educators about the narrowness of standardized tests as the criterion (the criterion, not one of many criteria), but test scores remained the altar.

In an attempt to pursue a wider understanding of student support, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) became law in 2015. Schools were given more flexibility in measuring student progress, a clear push-back against NCLB. At the same time, ASCD popularized the term “whole child” to remind everyone that students were more than their test scores. Today, all 50 states have SEL (social and emotional learning) standards, and CASEL (the Consortium for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning is a major force in looking at student capacities and potential. These are significant steps forward in recognizing that problem-solving, the definition of intelligence, is not limited to reading, writing, and calculating.

But recall my opening comment about progress not being smooth. Today, there is resistance to viewing student potential and problem-solving in a broader context. Teachers and administrators share that rhetoric aside, what counts, what they are asked about by supervisors and, often parents, are their students’ standardized test scores. This narrow focus is reinforced by today’s political milieu. Fatuous claims are being made about the intelligence of Haitians, for example, in arguments to limit immigration. Of course, these same arguments about the lower intelligence of ethnic groups were used about Irish and Italian immigrants as well as African Americans in the past.

The notion of the bell-shaped curve, the idea that virtually all human variations fall neatly along a continuum, with the bulk of a characteristic in the middle and an equal proportion falling along each side, is false. Charles Murray and James Herrnstein proclaimed this in their book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, citing the model as evidence for the intellectual superiority of some groups. But in More Like Us, James Fallows noted that the bell-shape curve that exists in standard intelligence testing occurs because the tests are designed to elicit that result! Test items which are chosen to lead to that bell-shaped curve, thus reinforcing the model which many people accept despite its limitations.

While all states now note SEL as a positive, an editor recently told me that sales of a book for teachers were limited because the author used the term “SEL” in the text. As another example of our internecine politics, references to DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) issues are banned from curriculum in some states. Rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court have made it more difficult for universities to consider all of a child’s background and potential in determining enrollment. Yet some politicians and school leaders hide behind the purported objectivity of standardized scores, ignoring the strengths that students have which are not evident in a standardized test.

Indeed, the positive correlation among socio-economic status, race, and student achievement affirms a narrow definition of intelligence and the socio-economic and racial hierarchy within our country. This revanchist view ignores the potential of too many students. Steps forward are followed by steps backwards and, in turn, those steps backwards are followed by progress. I remain confident schools will recognize and address a wider range of student capacities, multiple intelligences; indeed, AI will increase the speed at which that happens. I just want the pendulum to swing to the benefit of students as soon as possible.