"What's the story" on story intelligence?

When I initially put forth the theory of multiple intelligences, I had in mind specific criteria for what counts as an intelligence, and what doesn’t. My original list stipulated seven intelligences. I subsequently added an 8th intelligence—the naturalist intelligence—and have tentatively written about a possible existential intelligence and a possible pedagogical intelligence.

Of course, in the last forty years, the use of the descriptor “intelligence” has expanded indefinitely. Daniel Goleman put “emotional intelligence” on the map; and thereafter there has been a cascade of nominated intelligences (from financial to sexual), some more plausible, others more speculative or even ill-considered.

I am comfortable with the informal phrase “story intelligence.” The capacity to make, transmit, and understand stories is an important capacity and characteristic of human beings. And as this article by Flora Rosevsky in The Atlanta Jewish Times (reproduced below) indicates, stories can be put to many uses, including educational ones.

Putting on my hat as a researcher, I would pose a few questions:

1. How broad is the definition of a story? Does it include a joke? A proverb? Do musical compositions convey stories? Is the Bible one story, or countless stories? Is this note a story? What about the article in The Atlanta Jewish Times? What is NOT a story and why?  

2. Do all societies haves stories? What are the constants and what are the different characteristics? For example, are there societies without fiction? Without myths? Or societies when only certain designated individuals can tell or perform stories?

3. Wearing my “MI hat”: Which intelligences are involved in story telling and which not? I could make a case that story telling is primarily a function of linguistic intelligence. Or, in a more generous mood, I could extend “story intelligence” to each of the several intelligences e.g. the story contained in a theme in a musical composition, or the story of a ballerina in a classical dance?

4. Put epigrammatically, “What’s the ‘story’ on story intelligence?”
   The answer might make a good “news story.”

From The Atlanta Jewish Times
Story Intelligence

An emerging concept about the way our brains are wired for story affects how we understand what it means to be human.

By FLORA ROSEFSKY

February 24, 2021

 “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” 
— Socrates

From the beginning of time humans have been telling stories. The evidence spans from cave drawings of hunters and animals to oral traditions retelling events transposed onto scrolls or books. In all its expressions, storytelling formed roadmaps for how people thought and behaved.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Films, photography, TED Talks, YouTube videos, art projects, memoir writing and fictional books are all manifestations of contemporary storytelling. But storytelling is not just about entertainment. Telling our stories and listening to others’ points of view enriches the meaning of our lives. 

Using his experience as a writer, artist and storyteller, Richard Stone of Atlanta, along with Scott Livengood of North Carolina, former CEO of Krispy Kreme, developed an emerging concept called story intelligence to explain the multiple ways storytelling impacts our lives. Having met while serving on the board of the Tennessee-based International Storytelling Center, they recently co-authored a new book, “Story Intelligence: Master Story, Master Life,” coming out next month.

The AJT asked those familiar with the concept to explain how stories can reinforce or change one’s beliefs and thinking, as well as how they impact education and business.

 “One of the keys to facilitating learning rests in story’s power to evoke new perspectives and insight,” Stone writes in his new book.

Stone, who earned a master of science degree in clinical psychology from Peabody College at Vanderbilt University, further observed that most instructional settings have moved away from narrative approaches to teaching. “Instead, classrooms have become places to train minds and exact conformity and understanding. If we want to fix education, we must return to using storytelling as an integral ingredient in learning environments,” he said.

“This is true because storytelling plays such an integral role in language acquisition and human development. Telling or reading stories to young children such as ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ or ‘The Giving Tree’ enables children’s brains to make important connections.” More importantly, Stone said, children learn their actions have consequences, just as a book’s characters had to make the right decisions to get good outcomes. By seeing how a character in a story postpones gratification, children in turn can learn how to develop impulse-control, he said.

Marshall P. Duke, a professor of psychology at Emory University, referred to story intelligence “as an emerging concept, which may parallel creative and speculative concepts like emotional intelligence or personal intelligence in the spirit of Howard Gardner’s theories about multiple intelligences.” Gardner is a Harvard University psychologist.

In an email to the AJT, Duke emphasized the important role that story intelligence can play in education and how the more that children know about their family stories, the more resilient they appear to be.

 “If this finding is corroborated and extended to people of all ages and across different cultures AND if knowledge of family stories can be reframed as story intelligence, then SI will rise to a much higher level of interest and impact,” he stated.

Duke suggested that psychologists take story intelligence seriously, just as other concepts that start out with a proposition such as Stone’s. Self-esteem started out this way and became a major force. Even the term intelligence itself was once just a proposed idea in the early 20th century, he wrote.

Seth Kahan owns a business strategy company, Visionary Leadership, in Bethesda, Md. He worked with Stone in the 1990s to bring business leaders together to learn how to use the “power of story” in organizations.

Kahan emphasized that storytelling is more than a children’s activity. He was introduced to storytelling in the 1980s and has found that teachers, thought leaders and politicians have been using story intelligence for centuries.

“Stories are a primary tool to satisfy our desire to grasp meaning or create it, and to collectively understand our world,” Kahan said. “It’s about time we started using storytelling intentionally and teaching it as an effective communication tool.”

Stone hopes his upcoming book will initiate a conversation around the concept of story intelligence to engage more research and theoretical development around the idea.

Photo by Catherine Hammondon Unsplash

Are Writing Skills Still Important?

In a recent article on The Good Men Project, author Warren Blumenfeld asked:

Do people today need a high level of writing skills to succeed in our ever-changing world?

Blumenfeld brings up multiple intelligences theory and notes that assessment on standardized tests is focused on logical mathematical intelligence and linguistic intelligence. He acknowledges that students suffer when other intelligences are not recognized. However, he also laments that writing skills are increasingly undervalued by educators with some allowing their students to write in bullet points rather than full sentences, and even to use texting contractions and emojis in their papers. He suggests it is time for educators to go back to basics to develop their students’ linguistic intelligence.

with the virtual explosion of media platforms, which has exponentially expanded printed materials and forums for expression, users’ writing skills seem to have degraded to shorthand code that none but other users can comprehend. Are these users the new privileged elite, or, rather, are they the new masses being left behind by the truly skilled writers?

I still believe that my responsibility is to prepare the best educated, aware, and articulate critical thinkers that I possibly can. And I still believe that writing skills are one component – a very important component – in this responsibility

If educators can find a multimodal approach using oral, auditory, and kinesthetic forms of teaching and expression to develop their students’ multiple intelligences at the same, so much the better.

Read the full article here https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/writing-on-writing/.

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Discovery of "Hidden-Thought" Neurons Involved in MI Theory

Four decades ago,  I was working out the details of the theory of multiple intelligences. One vital source of information was the delineation of specific areas of the cortex that are critical for the operation of particular intelligences—for example, regions of the left hemisphere for language computation, and regions of the right hemisphere for spatial computation. (Of course, in left handed persons, this dominance is often reversed).

In the intervening decades, a great deal of new information has been discerned about the brain basis for various cognitive capacities. For one thing, we know much more about how individual neurons or neuron networks are dedicated to specific computations—as often quipped by students, the so-called “grandmother” or “Jennifer Aniston” neural networks, which are activated solely by those specific “stimuli.”

In both the article The Neurons That Hold Our Hidden Thoughts by Slomski and the article, Single-Neuronal Predictions of Others’ Beliefs in Humans by Jamali, Grannan., Fedorenko, et al., I was very pleased to learn about the findings of a group of neuroscientists affiliated with MIT and the Massachuetts General Hospital in Boston. Recording neural activity as patients were undergoing neurosurgery, the researchers discovered individual neurons that are sensitive to the beliefs and feelings of other persons. Even more compellingly, some neurons are so specialized that they respond only in cases where the belief of another individual is thought to be false—and some neurons encode information that distinguishes one person’s belief from another.  As concluded by lead scientist Jamali, “By combining the computations of all the neurons, you get a very detailed representation of the contents of another’s beliefs and an accurate prediction of whether they are true or false.”

The relationship of these findings to “MI theory” should be clear. For understanding of other persons (interpersonal intelligence) and for understanding of yourself (intrapersonal intelligences), you need cognitive mechanisms that represent beliefs, who holds them, and whether those beliefs are warranted or not. The last sentence is self-evident: Now we know that these capacities are computed by specific neural networks which can be distinguished from one another.

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Is there a risk intelligence?

The subject of risk has been much in the news lately in regards to health, vaccinations, and investment. Howard Gardner recently received an inquiry from Chile wondering why during a worldwide pandemic people would disregard health risks, suggesting they lack “risk intelligence.” He wrote:

I have observed many people with very different profiles, even very capable or intelligent (according to the different types) people, who act negligently with respect to the COVID-19 virus and ignore the most basic recommendations to stay safe, even among those who work in healthcare.
When researching about this, in English and Spanish, I found that the term risk intelligence is used in companies or organizations, or about people, but with respect to investments. I have not found anything about it regarding people and the vital risks they may be faced with.
How does the theory of the multiple intelligences approach life-risk management? Considering that it has a literal life or death impact on the subject himself, can we be dealing with a new type of intelligence: The Risk Intelligence?

Howard Gardner responds:

Thanks for your question. Very briefly, risk management involves both intelligence(s) and motivation. An understanding of the risk entails logical-mathematical intelligence. But whether you decide to act on the basis of that computation, is an issue of personality and motivation.

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US Presidential Inauguration and Multiple Intelligences

The US presidential inauguration of Joe Biden took place on January 20, 2021. In this excerpt from the latest issue of the ASCD Multiple Intelligences Newsletter, Dr. Thomas Hoerr reflects on that occasion and the multiple intelligences in evidence.

I believe that the inauguration ceremony had such a profound impact because it was a magnificent display of the power of multiple intelligences. In Frames of Mind, Dr. Howard Gardner viewed intelligence pragmatically, defining it as the “the ability to solve a problem or create a product that is valued in a culture.” In these divisive times, what solution to a problem could be more valued in our country and culture than how to honor our country’s traditions, inaugurate a new president and provide hope for the future? Using all of the intelligences to do this exacerbated the richness of the event in a wonderful way. 

The presidential oath is a mere 35 words: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Vowing to fulfill those words was the only requirement for Biden to become president. That could have been done quicky, quietly, and even somewhat privately, but what a missed opportunity that would have been. Instead, beyond those 35 words, the event was designed to heal, teach, and inspire, and that is where the multiple intelligences were so important.

Spatially, the inauguration was a visual feast. From the huge banners to the various military uniforms with their medals and braids, to the outfits on the platform, to the rhythmic marching of honor guards, tradition was visible at every corner. Glimpsing the Bible on which Biden took the oath – a family heirloom since 1893 that he had used for his previous oaths of office – was a treat. Clothing carried messages too: Vice-President Kamala Harris chose purple for the color of her dress to honor Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to congress (and who ran for president in 1972), and Dr. Jill Biden said that she wore a blue dress to signify indicate trust, confidence, and stability.

A very contrasting but incredibly effective spatial message was seeing the broken pane of glass in the Capital door. Surely enough time had passed since the failed coup to have replaced it, so my sense is that it was left as a very salient reminder of that terrible day. It did just that.

Music played a prominent place in the inauguration ceremony, and it was both soothing and inspiring. I was moved when Lady Gaga sang The National Anthem, wearing a giant golden dove pin to symbolize peace. Jennifer Lopez recited a portion of the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish and sang This Land Is Your Land. Garth Brooks singing Amazing Grace was powerful and it conjured up memories of another heart-felt time, when President Obama sang it during the eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney at a Charleston church. (In Esquire, Brooks said, “I might be the only Republican at this place. But it's reaching across, loving one another because that's what's going to get us through probably the most divided times that we have. I want the divided times to be behind us.”) The music from the marching bands was enjoyable, and I was especially struck by the notion of “team”; they were a unit, working together for a higher purpose.

The synchronized bodily-kinesthetic movements of the honor guards and soldiers proclaimed order and strength. And how could one not be moved from seeing firefighter Andrea Hall leading the Pledge of Allegiance in words and sign language? Before and after the actual inauguration there were frequent shots of the White House and Capitol from a helicopter, and they were wonderful reminders of the inspiring architecture and the natural beauty that surrounds it. The incredible planning and orchestration of such a flawless event, from who sat where to the sequence and timing of events, depended on the logical-mathematical intelligence.

As in so many other spheres of life, the power personal intelligences was evident. It was great to see so many politicians greeting and obviously caring for one another, including  the same people who are unable to listen to or work with others of the opposing party. Hopefully this new leadership can keep the tone of care and collaboration alive. Biden’s empathy was a significant part of his election and it was obvious in his words. Our country’s need for “unity” or “uniting” was mentioned eleven times, and I found his comment, “Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together,” very significant. Biden’s concern for others was palpable.

 Giving an effective speech depends much on the speaker’s interpersonal intelligence. It enables you to know what the audience wants and what they need, responding to others and leading them. Occasionally a talented speaker can segue an audience from their current want to what they need. Biden did some of that in his efforts to heal, to embrace, and to forge a new path. I was particularly taken when he said, “But the American story depends not on any one of us, not on some of us, but on all of us.”

As the inauguration celebration continued into the evening, I saw former presidents Bill Clinton, G. W. Bush, and Barack Obama standing together in the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery, talking about their support for President Biden and their hopes for the future. Their intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences brought them together in that place at that moment, just as they enabled each man to become president.

Finally, the linguistic intelligence was central to this event and this day. Speaker after speaker spoke well and to our hearts. But perhaps the most stunning voice was that of 22-year old poet Amanda Gorman. The youngest inaugural poet in history, her poem pushed visions and thoughts that were painful while she pulled us along to a brighter future. Talking about her poem before the ceremony, she said, “There is space for grief and horror and hope and unity, and I also hope that there is a breath for joy in the poem, because I do think we have a lot to celebrate at this inauguration.” Her words and delivery captured our pain and our hope. She was remarkable.

 But I write this newsletter not only as a citizen, but as an educator. As a citizen, I appreciate our country’s journey and am optimistic about our future. Amanda Gorman captured this wonderfully well in her poem, “ Somehow we've weathered and witnessed / a nation that isn’t broken / but simply unfinished. As an educator, I am reminded of the power of MI. This event was much more vivid and meaningful because the problem – “How do we reflect on our past, honor our elected president, and provide hope for the future?” - was presented through so many different  intelligences. Of course, using MI has that positive impact on students in our classrooms, too. Regardless of who, what, or where we are teaching, our students are far more likely to be engaged and much more likely to learn when MI is a tool that we use in teaching and enable them to use in learning.

Thomas R. Hoerr is emeritus head of school at the New City School in St. Louis, Missouri. He is currently a Scholar In Residence at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and teaches in the Educational Leadership program, preparing prospective principals.

Photo by Louis Velazquez on Unsplash