Mindy Kornhaber: Trump's Intelligence

Trump’s Intelligence

Mindy Kornhaber

Whether one prefers or deplores Donald Trump, the press is like a moth to his orange flame. As a result, he’s become the steadfast set of pixels on many of our screens for the better part of a year. How is it that someone who has never held public office and has evinced ignorance on matters of policy (e.g., abortion, a wall paid for by Mexico) has completely outpaced his Republican rivals? Is it a sign of genius? If so, what sort? I consider Trump’s intelligence through both a traditional IQ lens and the theory of multiple intelligences (MI).

IQ

According to a pre-candidate Trump tweet, “…my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it!” (May 8, 2013). This tweet, like so many other Trumpnouncements, is hard to verify. Estimates online peg his IQ between125-156, but these scores don’t rest on factual bases or rigorous methodology. Correlates of a high IQ, e.g., high SAT scores, have not been forthcoming or available. So, the short answer is we don’t know what Trump’s IQ is. If Trump knows his own IQ and knows that it’s “one of the highest,” it’s reasonable to think he would release a verifiable score report.

But let’s say, for the sake of argument, Trump’s self-assessment is on the mark. Would a high-IQ equip Trump to advance the well-being of people throughout the country, and, indeed, the world? It turns out that measured intelligence and the spine required to serve the common good are usually kept in separate psychological boxes. (The Good Project, at thegoodproject.org, is an initiative spearheaded by Howard Gardner that seeks to elucidate how to achieve “the good” for society). Even if Trump's IQ stacked up, it can’t gauge whether he’d act ethically in office. Several Nazi leaders had IQs above 130 (c. top 2.4%). I keep a list of their scores posted outside my office. The point: IQ is not a measure of goodness, values, or the capacity to understand human worth and protect human dignity.

If Trump does have “one of the highest” IQs, such a score is not needed for the nation’s top job. Nearly everyone who manages the complexities of high-finance building projects in New York or a national political campaign (or gets just an undergraduate degree, without honors, from Wharton as Trump did) will have an IQ good enough to be president, i.e., one reasonably above the 100 average. An exceptionally high IQ is not required to do important and complex work: Neither Watson nor Crick -- Nobel laureates for discovering DNA -- hurtled the genius low bar of 130 IQ. And longitudinal research on the Termites (high-IQ children initially identified by IQ guru, Lewis Terman) underscores that high IQ does not foretell unusual success. The point: If Trump has “one of the highest IQs,” it doesn’t up his qualifications for president.

Even if Trump had the highest IQ in the candidate pack, it would not indicate how well he’d perform relative to his rivals. Statistically speaking, the population of candidates is too small and the variation in their scores is likely too narrow to permit such prognostications. Generally, IQ has a moderate degree of 'predictive validity' with occupational status (e.g. sales clerk v. accountant v. rocket scientist). However, it does not predict performance within occupational status. That is, IQ doesn’t help predict who’ll be a better accountant or president.

Multiple Intelligences (“MI”)

That IQ doesn’t predict performance within a given occupation indicates that success in real work requires capacities not surveyed by intelligence tests. This is partly because intelligence testing was invented with the rise of mass education in order to examine and predict performance in school settings at the time (in the early 20th century). In such settings, problems are solved by individuals, have right and wrong answers, and focus on language, math, and sequential logictasks. Intelligence tests likewise examine, and are best at predicting, these sorts of performances. Underlying such performances is supposedly one problem-solving ability (or variations thereof), called ‘general intelligence.’

Rather than seeking to explain and predict school-like performances, Howard Gardner developed MI to shed light on the abilities ("intelligences") that enable people "to solve problems or fashion products that are valued in one or more cultures." So, MI provides a more 'real world' (v. e.g. classroom) perspective on human problem solving.

Gardner's analyses of research from his own fields of cognitive development and neuropsychology, and from linguistics, comparative psychology, anthropology, and psychometrics has led him to posit at least eight, relatively autonomous intelligences: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and naturalist. Intelligence tests seek to assess the first three (at most). Standardized school tests commonly assess only the first two.

If true, Trump’s self-reported high IQ indicates that he has the linguistic intelligence to speak persuasively to his political supporters and the logical-mathematical intelligence to determine when to seek bankruptcy protection. However, IQ scores say nothing about forms of savvy essential for political life and leadership: intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences.

Trump -- and anyone aspiring to high office -- believes he can do better than the next guy or woman. That kind of belief will be more or less grounded in intrapersonal intelligence. This intelligence enables individuals to understand their own feelings and motivations and to have an effective working model of themselves.

On the intrapersonal front, Trump may have an understanding of his own feelings and motivations. He is evidently motivated to garner the spotlight and hold it by tossing out comments that violate common practices of civil and political speech. This has led various psychologists to label him a narcissist (see Vanity Fair, November 11, 2015 online).

However, what is especially problematic is the chunk of Trump’s intrapersonal intelligence entailing "an effective working model of oneself." He apparently thinks his skillset as a popular entertainer or businessman fits him to be president of a democracy whose Constitution was designed to check and limit power. Yet, "You're fired!" is not a workable presidential directive to Congress or the Supreme Court.

Interpersonal intelligence enables individuals to understand others' motivations and needs. As Trump struts down the runway toward the November election, he will have to rely more on interpersonal intelligence than his work until now has required. Two aspects of interpersonal intelligence are important.

First, to get elected, it’s essential for Trump to understand voters’ needs and motivations, so that he can persuade them (as well as delegates) that he’ll act in line with their interests. Trump has shown he has enough interpersonal intelligence to get more votes than his Republican rivals. He understands that parts of the Republican base feel pushed off the economic ladder (perhaps by immigrants) or have been ignored by (weak, bought) politicians. These days, he's seeking to get votes by identifying himself/his candidacy as a victim and outsider, akin to those in his base who feel marginalized. He also understands that violating typical modes of speech appeals to many people who are sick of politics as usual. However, if Trump actually wants to win (and, of course, he’s a winner not a loser!), he’ll have to use his interpersonal intelligence to gain support from those who have not yet found his modus operandi appealing (and/or Hillary will have to stumble). He’s a good salesperson for himself. Perhaps he’ll succeed.

Second, were Trump to be elected, he would actually have to work in a sustained way with people whose desires, intentions, and motivations are often at odds with his own. This is something for which he’s evinced little inclination. For such work, he'd also need to draw on intrapersonal intelligence to understand that he must learn to work with people who have joint responsibility for governing. Despite being a “deal maker without peer” , he’d have to figure out how to “deal” with leaders of other powerful nations, even though their knowledge and experience in matters of world affairs far exceed his own.

In sum, it's not necessary to have an unusually high IQ to be a good president. Moreover, IQ doesn’t measure the intra- and interpersonal intelligences needed to run for office and succeed if elected. Trump has good enough interpersonal skills to get votes from his base of supporters. He may have good enough skills to grab the majority of the electorate in November. However, to be effective as POTUS, Trump would need exceptional interpersonal skills. Unfortunately, he shows inadequate capacity to take in others' perspectives, weigh them, and work constructively with people he can’t fire. He'd also need adequate enough intrapersonal intelligence to realize he’d enter the office without an effective working model to guide his actions in office. He’d have to seek to address that flaw, despite already perceiving himself as a great and amazing success story . Whatever his IQ, Trump’s gaps in inter- and intrapersonal intelligences are deeply problematic for the job he’s now seeking. They could also be problematic for the nation and the world.

Mindy Kornhaber is an associate professor at Penn State. She joined the faculty in 2001 after serving as a researcher at Harvard University for more than a decade. Her work draws equally from the fields of social policy and human development and focuses on two related questions: How do institutions and the policies surrounding them enhance or impede the development of individual potential? How can individual potential be developed both to a high level and on an equitable basis? For the past several years, she has been concerned with testing policies and their influence on educational equity and students' intellectual development. She is also concerned with assessment, educational equity, how theories of intelligence influence school practice, and school reform.

Dr. Marty Nemko of Psychology Today Interviews Howard Gardner

Howard Gardner was recently interviewed by Psychology Today's Marty Nemko, Ph.D. Dr. Nemko and Dr. Gardner discussed MI, education, ethics, and what still lies in store for Dr. Gardner.

The text of this interview is below and can be found in it's original form here.

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Multiple Intelligence, Higher Education Reform, and Ethics
An interview with Howard Gardner. By Marty Nemko Ph.D.

It’s comforting to think that our intelligence isn’t reducible to a single number. Indeed, especially in education circles, the theory of multiple intelligences is widely embraced.

In today’s interview, part of a series called "The Eminents," I spoke with that theory’s creator, Howard Gardner. We spoke not only about that but about his current work examining U.S. higher education and ethical issues in the professions, including psychology.

Howard Gardner is the Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard. He received a MacArthur "Genius Grant,"  and has received honorary degrees from 31 colleges. He’s twice been selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of the world’s 100 most influential public intellectuals. He has written 30 books that have been translated into 32 languages.

MN: Say a little about the theory of multiple intelligences.

HG: Multiple-intelligence theory has never been embraced by the psychometric community but has had enormous influence in education in many parts of the world. Most of my thinking has focused on educational uses—individualizing education and multiple ways of presenting concepts--and criticizing proposals that seem wrong-headed, for example, describing groups in terms of their "dominant intelligences," or creating short-answer tests that purport to reveal the test-taker’s intellectual profile.

MN: So it’s more of a philosophy than data-based?

HG: No, the theory is entirely empirical, based on a huge amount of data gleaned from several disciplines. But it’s not experimental—You can’t do a test to prove the theory right or wrong. Rather, like many theories in non-experimental fields like geology, archaeology, astronomy, or even evolution, it’s a synthesis of data.  Its survival is based on whether better syntheses come along.

MN:  Over the years, has the theory changed?

HG: For the most part, it has withstood the test of time. I have added one intelligence (naturalist) and contemplated the evidence for two additional ones (existential and pedagogical.) But I’ve now moved on to other topics, for example, examining higher education on several campuses around the nation and considering how it might best be transformed. Once again, the study is based on data—My team and I will carry out about 2,000 interviews. Our findings will be our synthesis of what we’ve learned.

MN: I believe that a core problem with undergraduate education, especially at research universities like Harvard, Stanford, NYU, etc, is that most teaching is done by PhDs, who by temperament, training, interests, and rewards are researchers first. So they spend most of their time and energy probing a snip of a field’s cutting edge.  In my view, the attributes needed to be a transformative undergraduate instructor are pretty orthogonal to that. It would seem that undergraduate education would be superior if there was a separate track for teaching faculty. Your thoughts?

HG: At institutions with which I am familiar, advancement and tenure is generally evaluated in terms of research productivity, with teaching evaluations and institutional service considered as well. In the future, I favor adding the components of "helping students to grow" and "strengthening the institution.”

American undergraduate education in the liberal arts has been justifiably admired around the world. Citizens with means seek to send their children to Stanford or Swarthmore or Skidmore and many countries crave connections to American universities—See Yale-Singapore,  NYU-Abu Dhabi.

We do need to ask more of teachers but also of students, parents, and policymakers.  The goal of our current study is to point the way toward quality higher education in the United States and in the rest of the world.

MN: Your current work also focuses on ethical issues in the field of education. Here’s one I’m particularly curious about. Is it fair to subject the nation's students to the full range of instructor quality? Mightn't more students, rich and poor, learn more from an online, highly-immersive interactive individually paced, differentially taught online course team-taught by a dream team of the nation's most transformational teachers and supplemented by  an in-person discussion group?

HG: Initially, there was ecstasy about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses)—They were going to solve all of our educational challenges. Then, there was the inevitable reaction: Most individuals don’t complete MOOCs, and those that do tend to be already well-educated. And so, hardly a solution.

MN: I’m talking about something different. I’m talking about making online courses available not just to the well-educated but as part of the curriculum for all college students. And because they were developed to serve the entire nation, they could be taught by a team of the nation's or even world's most transformational instructors, supported by, for example, gamification designers. And, as I said, it would be supplemented by an in-person discussion group.

HG: MOOCs are already available for all, though, as you note, they tend to be completed by individuals with sufficient expertise and motivation. I’m sure that they will steadily improve and will eventually be taken for granted.  However, accessibility is not the same as affordability. To create a quality MOOC is costly—and to include discussion facilitated by qualified instructors also requires resources. So far no one has found a way to educate on the cheap—Education is still more like a string quartet with little economy of scale than like the production of widgets.

MN: I do have to push back a little here.  If a course, say, calculus, were developed to serve the nation's let alone the world's students, the development cost per student would be amortized across millions of students and thus much lower than a nationful of traditional courses.

Let's turn to psychotherapists. After all, this is Psychology Today. It is difficult to control enough variables to ascertain therapy’s effectiveness or even a modality’s effectiveness, let alone effectiveness for adolescent African-American girls with moderate depression, 40%ile verbal intelligence but 70%ile emotional intelligence from a 20%ile SES living in rural Alabama. So therapists and patients alike end up relying on squooshy gut feeling to decide, for example, whether and with whom a patient should spend money and time in an attempt to heal. What is the ethical obligation of the individual psychotherapist and of the profession as a whole in that regard?

HG:  I am a trained psychologist but not a clinician and don’t have special knowledge on which to draw. That said, our work on ethics TheGoodProject.organd my blog The Professional Ethicist does offer a way to think about such issues.

The way to deal with ethical dilemmas is to create a common space—often called a commons—in which trained personnel can describe a dilemma, consider courses of action, and look for the best solution.

The commons doesn't end with the decision. It's important to examine the decision’s consequences, to learn positive lessons and reflect on the difficulties and failures to see whether a better decision could be made in the future.

You rightly point out the difference between the individual professional and the profession as a whole. Any profession should have norms around the issue you raise. And, in the words of the great economic thinker Albert Hirschman, we all owe a measure of loyalty to professional norms. But when the norms seem unhelpful or unproductive, one needs to speak up—to activate voice. And in the extreme, if the profession and one’s colleagues seem estranged from a thoughtfully selected course of action, you need to consider the possibility of exit. Of course, if you knowingly violate norms or laws, you need to be prepared to face the consequences—or to lead a revolution!

MN:You will soon be 73. What’s in store for the future?

HG: Contradictory precepts that have guided me for as long as I can remember: 1: I will live forever.  2: I will die tomorrow.

I see no reason to alter this dual allegiance: Though I am now past the Biblical threshold of 70, I’m at what has been dubbed the "still" age: still teaching, still conducting research, still writing.  To that list I’ve added two welcome descriptors: grandparent and mentor. I try to fill both roles competently.

As for my work, this interview has touched on its three principal phases.

• MI theory is now past adolescence and I am allowing it to fend for itself.

• Colleagues and I have now worked for two decades on issues of ethics, good work, and good citizenship. Our efforts now are to share what we have found—our concepts, our overall framework, our toolkits--with educators, other professionals, parents, students, etc. We also are seeking productive collaborations with other individuals and institutions that share these missions. I owe a special debt to Lynn Barendsen, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Bill Damon, Wendy Fischman and Carrie James who have been true partners in this work.

• Our current work is a large national study of "liberal arts and sciences in the 21st century.” We are studying ten deliberately disparate campuses. Our wonderful team is headed by Wendy Fischman. We are not ready yet to publicize our findings—indeed, we don’t yet know what they will be. Stay tuned!

This article originally appeared on www.psychologytoday.com.

Multiple Intelligence International School Celebrates 20 Years

This year the Multiple Intelligence International School celebrates its 20th anniversary. Founded in 1996, the school aims to recognize individual differences among children and work with students to help them achieve their highest potential. They believe, as I do, that all students are intelligent in their own way.

In recognition of their anniversary, I offer the following statement:

 It is now more than a dozen years since the Multiple Intelligence International School was launched; congratulations on your thriving enterprise over that period. I had the privilege of visiting the school a few years ago and was impressed by the energy, motivation, and thoughtfulness exhibited by students, staff, and parents. Of the many "MI schools" that I have visited over the years, the Manila-based school stands out in terms of the care with which the program has been conceptualized and carried through. I am in regular touch with Founding Director Joy Abaquin and recently had the opportunity in New York to watch her interact with two dozen MI educators from all over the world. All attendees were appropriately impressed by Joy's deep understanding of the key ideas of MI and her boundless energy in leading the school and producing future leaders for the Philippines and the world. I send you my warmest greetings and best wishes for many more years as a successful, pioneering educational institution.

For more information, MIIS can be found online here.

Howard Gardner Discusses Standardized Testing in Interview with Big Think

Howard Gardner was recently interviewed by Big Think regarding his opinions on standardized testing. While he values assessment in school settings, Dr. Gardner states that we've come to overvalue one kind of test (multiple-choice, short-answer exam) that measures only one kind of intelligence. View the full video below:

This video originally appeared on the knowledge forum Big Think, here.

Principal Connection / Multiple Ways to Learn

This month's edition of the ASCD publication Educational Leadership covers topics dealing with "Learning for Life". In his featured essay, "Principal Connection/Multiple Ways to Learn", Thomas R. Hoerr discusses intelligence, communication, multiple intelligences, and the recent passage of the "Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA).

Like Tom Hoerr, I am pleased whenever, as an educator, I encounter the modifier ‘multiple’.  And when the White House endorses ‘multiple measures’ of student learning and ‘other indicators of student success’, I feel that our work and our words over many years may finally be gaining some traction.

That said, as always, the importance lies in the details. For example, Mark Zuckerberg has now pledged a significant amount of his fortune to pursuing ‘personalized learning.”  But the modifier ‘personalized’ could range from simply varying the speed at which items are presented to teaching via topics that interest the learner.  By the same token, ‘multiple” could simply mean administering a number of standardized tests; or offering open-ended as well as multiple choice options;  or providing rich contexts with embedded challenges and noting how well students work individually or in groups.

Still, not to end on a downer, multiple measures are certainly preferable to a single test—which almost always means ‘the latest from ETS’.

For further reference, the original text of Thomas Hoerr's essay can be found below.

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Principal Connection / Multiple Ways to Learn

Thomas R. Hoerr

How important is it that every student in a school is excited about learning? Should we allow a student to use all her strengths in learning? Do you know someone who wasn't a particularly good student but has been very successful in life?

What these seemingly unrelated questions have in common is an appreciation for the range of talents that students—that all of us, really—possess. Answering them leads us to the theory of multiple intelligences (MI) conceived by Howard Gardner.1  My school began implementing MI in 1988. MI was not a panacea, but our school was filled with students and teachers who were excited about learning. And over the next decade-plus, hundreds of educators visited us each year to see how they could use MI to help more children learn and to help children learn more.

Then in 2001, No Child Left Behind was passed, and it became harder for teachers and principals to use multiple intelligences. Students' skills in the three Rs, determined by scores on standardized tests, became the measure of teacher and principal effectiveness. Educators knew the scores weren't all that mattered, but they also knew scores were what mattered most. In 2009, Race to the Top widened the path—but not by much.The recent passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) appears to be a step in the right direction. The White House notes that 

the bill encourages a smarter approach to testing by moving away from a sole focus on standardized tests to drive decisions around the quality of schools, and by allowing for the use of multiple measures of student learning and progress, along with other indicators of student success to make school accountability decisions.2  

I'm encouraged by ESSA, but I'm also hesitant. "Multiple measures" sounds good, but it will be hard to back away from the ease and objectivity of standardized measures. Failing to do so would be our loss—and a loss for our students.Intelligence is problem solving, and many problems are best solved by using a combination of intelligences. In schools, we typically limit students to using the scholastic intelligences—linguistic and logical-mathematical. Employing the musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, naturalist, intrapersonal, or interpersonal intelligences isn't encouraged as an option. That's unfortunate because these nonscholastic intelligences are integral to solving many of the problems we face every day.

Communication in the real world travels through many intelligences. The written word is only one way to describe events or relay messages. Often messages come to us through music, art, animation, or artifacts—so why not enable students to use these intelligences to share what they've learned?

At my school, for example, students read about the U.S. Civil War. But they also watch videos, access museum websites, touch artifacts, and visit nearby relevant locations. And although they take tests and write reports, they also build dioramas, draw timelines, develop plays with characters presenting differing points of view, and create poems or music that capture the times and tensions of that era.Likewise, in studying citizens who have made a difference in their community or the world, our students read about and write biographies of famous people. But they also use other intelligences for learning and sharing their knowledge. During Living Museum Day, they make presentations while dressed in costumes they created. Students from other classes, parents, and educators come to the "museum" (our library) to hear the oral presentations and then ask questions of Rosa Parks, John F. Kennedy, Michelangelo, or Mia Hamm. Preparing to present in the museum requires students to do research, write a report, make a costume, create an artifact, give an oral presentation, and respond to audience questions. No child fails at the Living Museum. Every student is excited about learning and uses different intelligences to show what he or she has learned.We value all intelligences at New City School, but we give a special focus to the personal intelligences because we believe that who you are is more important than what you know. The first page of every student's report card focuses solely on the personal intelligences—interpersonal (understanding others) and intrapersonal (knowing yourself). That emphasis is also reflected throughout our curriculum. Teachers are always on the lookout for ways to help children develop kindness, an appreciation for others, and grit.

My fingers are crossed that ESSA will allow us to return to using multiple intelligences to help students learn. How could you help your teachers use MI to increase student learning?

Endnotes

1  Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind. New York: Basic Books.

2  Muñoz, C. (2015, December 7). Q&A: What you need to know about the fix to No Child Left Behind [blog post]. Retrieved from The White House Blog.

Thomas R. Hoerr is emeritus head of school at the New City School in St. Louis, Missouri. He is the author of Becoming a Multiple Intelligences School (ASCD, 2000) and Fostering Grit: How Do I Prepare My Students for the Real World? (ASCD, 2013). Follow him on Twitter.