Reflections on Existential Intelligence

It’s forty years since I first proposed “the theory of multiple intelligences,” generally abbreviated as “MI theory” or simply “MI.” The theory is a critique of the notion that there exists a single, general intelligence, adequately assessed by a single psychometric instrument, conventionally an IQ test.

In its stead, I proposed that the human brain—and the human mind—are better described as a set of relatively autonomous computational capacities, known as the multiple intelligences. IQ tests sample linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence, in a fashion foregrounded in standard schools in the modern world. But there remain at least five other intelligences that are worth recognizing: musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligence. According to the theory: Rather than possessing a single all-purpose intelligence, we human beings have at least seven intelligences; strength (or weakness) in one of the intelligences does not reliably predict strength or weakness in the remaining intelligences.

Put concretely, if we know that someone is strong (or weak) in music, what can one predict about their understanding of other persons, or of themselves? The answer: In truth, very little.

MI theory has never won over the psychometric establishment—the test makers—who continue to embrace the single IQ-style measure. But much of the rest of world—scholarly, educational, lay—embraces the idea of multiple intelligences. And thanks to the work of Daniel Goleman, there is widespread support for the idea of emotional intelligence, or EQ.

Once MI theory became well known, there have been numerous efforts to enunciate and incorporate additional intelligences—financial, sexual, humor, cooking—you name it.

The research that led to MI theory took several years to carry out and involved a sizeable research team. We examined evidence across the disciplinary spectrum—from genetics and brain science to anthropological and sociological studies. Only those candidate intelligences that registered significantly on these disparate disciplinary indices qualified as genuine intelligences.

Indeed, the core of establishing “MI theory” is the analytic procedure by which candidate intelligences are judged as valid and distinct from other intelligences.

Accordingly, before I considered adding additional intelligences to my cohort, any “candidate intelligences” had to meet the same criteria as the original septet. The only intelligence that has officially been added (as an 8th intelligence) is “naturalist intelligence”—the capacity to make significant distinctions among natural phenomena—among trees, birds, fish, clouds, mountain ranges and other flora and fauna. This capacity has clearly been important in the evolutionary history (and pre-history) of human beings.

In modern society, we do not need routinely to be able to distinguish one mushroom from another, or one snake from another. But in my judgment, we draw on these same perceptual capacities to distinguish among items in the grocery store (plum vs. cherry tomatoes), the furniture shop (Shaker vs. colonial chairs), or the clothing boutique (peasant vs. vintage blouses).

Life is short and I have not had the wherewithal to consider other plausible intelligences. But I have considered informally two additional intelligences—pedagogical intelligence and existential intelligence.

Pedagogical is relatively simple and straightforward: it’s the human capacity to teach skills to other human beings (or less often, to animals or to computers). What distinguishes pedagogical intelligence is the capacity to understand which information, which models, which demonstrations will work effectively with other individuals. Even a three- or four-year-old, having picked up a skill, will model it quite differently, depending on whether that child is explaining or demonstrating the skill to a two-year-old, as compared to conveying it to a five-year-old or an adult. And of course, children differ significantly from one another in how well they can teach others. (As do adults: two violinists may be equally proficient performers: one may excel in teaching, the other may exhibit remarkably little pedagogical talent.)

That, in short, is pedagogical intelligence—which might well be a component of interpersonal intelligence. Hence, my hesitation in simply adding it to the panoply of intelligences.

Existential intelligence is a far more formidable capacity. Described succinctly, it’s the capacity to pose and reflect on the big questions of life: who are we, where do we come from, where are we headed, what is our place in the universe, why do we exist at all, what, indeed, is existence?!

Three thoughts arise immediately:

1. This sounds like philosophy—particularly existentialism—a branch of philosophy usually tied to French thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir, but actually dating back at least to the early 19th century Danish thinker Soren Kierkegaard, and the late 19th century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.

2. Beyond philosophy, how does existential intelligence relate to other human preoccupations—such as religion and mythology?

3. Isn’t existential intelligence just a skill associated with standard schooling—in which case, it draws on language and logic, on standard IQ, and does not require other fancy psychological analyses, metrics, terminologies?

All reasonable questions. Let me start with the last—it’s more straightforward.

In thinking about these issues, I find it useful to revert to two psychologists who had great influence on 20th century thought, including my own. One is Jean Piaget, the developmental psychologist, who probed “the child’s conception of the world.” The other is Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, who wrote about infantile sexuality, but also the panorama of dreams, wishes, anxieties, and phobias that characterize all of us from a young age.

I mention these two thinkers, these pioneers, because they both sought to enter the world of the child’s mind. Admittedly they drew principally on the mind of the European child 100-150 years, but also—and ambitiously—on the more general mind (as it were, The Mind of All Human Beings).

Surely, Piaget and Freud would have agreed, language and logic are featured in the kinds of questions, concerns, anxieties that a person—be it a young child or an aging adult—raises and ponders. But these scholars—along with many of us who followed in their footsteps— recognized that the child’s mind was far more than simply a blend, a reflection of these two “scholastic” forms of knowing. Piaget focused on actions upon the world (he called them “operations”) and the insights gained from actions; Freud explored the imagination, emotions, the fears, anxieties, and aspirations which were as likely to be captured in dreams or works of art as in stories or equations.

Indeed, we—all human beings— behold the natural world; we listen to and sometimes create music; we test the limits of our bodies, in sport, dance, exercise; we explore the range of space (those within our ambit, those that stretch as far as the eye—the conventional telescope, or, as of late, the NASA Webb telescope—can stretch. And these mental exercises draw, individually and corporately, on the range and combinations of human intelligences.

A child may ask “What is going to happen to me?” or “How high does the sky reach?” or “What’s the smallest number in the world? Or the largest?” But these verbal expressions are only—or primarily—an entry point to the exercise of several other intelligences, not particularly or naturally scholastic in nature. And children can address such issues as well through play, dance, song, dreams, or even nightmares… with attendant symptoms and attendant symbols.

Turning to the other questions:

As I view it, philosophy is a scholarly discipline. It may well have arisen in diverse cultures, but in the West, we associate philosophy with the questions and problems first pondered thousands of years ago by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and their students—and carried forward in the last millennium by thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

I posit that myths are the pre-modern version of philosophy, including the philosophical school called existentialism. While most cultures do not feature the academic discipline of philosophy, nearly all feature mythology—a genre which naturally raises, addresses, and seeks to resolve fundamental issues of existence. Myths endorse, highlight, or less regularly expel issues of existence.

So this, in short, is the thinking, the evidence, on the basis of which I speculate about the possibility of a separate existential intelligence. In the modern West, the discipline of philosophy may be one culmination of existential intelligence, at least in a scholastic setting. But the impulse to ponder, pose, and progress on the biggest (and the most minute) issues of life and death are part of the human condition—and may well qualify as a distinct form of human intellect. And these impulses may well be found across a range of persons—from choreographers to physicists.

There’s the case for a distinct existential intelligence. It can lead to philosophical thinking, including an embracement or a rejection of the philosophical school of existentialism.

But it’s equally important to state what existential intelligence is NOT.

1. It’s not a religious intelligence. It neither requires nor precludes a belief in an organized religion, with a potpourri of gods, or just one God… with numerous rites and prayers or only a conversation with the Almighty. Of course, religious people may well engage in existential pondering—though they may also be wary of reaching skeptical conclusion.

2. It’s not a spiritual intelligence—that is, it does not require a belief – or a presence—in a spiritual realm. While spirituality may indeed compose an important part of existential thinking, it’s not required—and spirituality might well be absorbed in other intelligences, ranging from musical to spatial to naturalistic. And some of the most important philosophers and philosophies deliberately avoid any mention—let alone a celebration—of the spiritual.

3. It’s not a value judgment. One can put existential intelligence to benevolent uses—for example, Grete Thunberg’s passion for preserving the environment. And one can put it to malevolent uses: the Nazi’s belief that they were purifying the race and creating a superhuman may well have involved existential thinking, but it is hardly praiseworthy.

Relatedly, value judgements are just that—they reflect each person’s current sense of what is good and what is not. While most readers of these words would presumably endorse the Thunberg program, while challenging the Nazi program, there are significant numbers of individual who would not agree. (As an additional example, consider the wide division in contemporary US citizens about what is benevolent and what is malevolent in our current system of government).

Values are not the same as intelligences. Indeed, to play with words, values can reflect stupidities as well as intelligences. It’s important to keep them straight and not conflate them.

Let me put it differently (and in contemporary lingo). The intelligences—whether or not one includes “existential” in their ranks—are simply computational capacities—strings of 1 and 0 as it were. The uses to which these strings are put reflect human values within or across cultures and not neuronal computations.

To be sure, issues of spirituality and of religion are very important—arguably more important than issues of intelligence(s). But they require a different analytic lens and may well not be explicable in terms of current social science.

(With thanks to Courtney Bither, Shinri Furuzawa, and Ellen Winner for their careful reading and suggestions on an earlier draft.)

References

Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (2006). Multiple Intelligences: New horizons. Basic Books.

Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. Bantam Books.

Using Logical Mathematical Intelligence to Win the Lottery

Howard Gardner has long advised that we should use our intelligences for good purposes (see the blog post on Intertwining Multiple Intelligences and Good Work). Intelligences themselves are morally neutral, however, the examples of Nelson Mandela and Slobodan Milosevic, both of whom had considerable interpersonal intelligence, demonstrate how an intelligence can be used to inspire people around the world or foster ethnic hatred and even genocide.

In a recent review (link here) of the new movie, Jerry and Marge Go Large, the reviewer notes that the main character, Jerry, has exceptional logical-mathematical intelligence.

According to developmental psychologist Howard Gardner there are roughly 12 different types of intelligence: Musical-rhythmic and harmonic, Visual-spatial, Linguistic-verbal, Logical-mathematical, Bodily-kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Naturalistic, and Existential. Jerry’s a logical-mathematical guy to a fault.

Jerry, played by Bryan Cranston, uses his logical-mathematical intelligence to game the lottery, exploiting a loophole in certain variations. In the movie, the financial gains are used by the protagonists in part to help their struggling local community.

The plot of the movie is taken from true events, first revealed in a Boston Globe article (link here). Two lotteries first in Michigan and, when that was shut down, another in Massachusetts were exploited by Gerald Selbee and his syndicate. They were not alone in gaming the Massachusetts lottery, a Boston University biomedical researcher and an MIT student had realized the same loophole and were also playing with their own syndicates.

This movie raises some interesting questions:

• In the movie, was Jerry using his intelligence for good if the money he won was used to help his community?

• Was it it ethical to game a lottery when no laws were broken?

• Are lotteries themselves ethical as they generate needed revenue for state governments at the expense of low-income ticket buyers?

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Pedagogical (Teaching) Intelligence: Some Intriguing Findings

Officially—and there are very few arenas where I am empowered to invoke that descriptor—there are eight intelligences. In each case, I have reviewed the empirical evidence with respect to the candidate intelligence: and then I have concluded that the evidence warrants the positing of a separate (what I call semi-autonomous) intelligence.

Unofficially, I have speculated about the possibility of two additional intelligences: existential intelligence (the intelligence that posits and ponders Big Questions); and pedagogical intelligence (the intelligence that enables human beings to teach other human beings). In each case, there is some evidence in support of the candidate intelligence; but because I have not studied the proposed intelligence sufficiently, I have termed these “candidate intelligences”; we might say that they are consigned—at least for now—to an intellectual purgatory.

I am always on the lookout for evidence relevant to these “candidate intelligences”.

And so I read with interest a recent article (link here) in Psychological Science—arguably the most prestigious publication that reports empirical research in psychology.

Called “Tips from the Top: Do the Best Performers Really Give the Best Advice” it’s authored by David E. Levari, Daniel Gilbert, and Timothy Wilson, respected scholars.

The study examined how subjects approached a game—Word Scrabble. The learners—the test subjects— received advice from those who are knowledgeable about the game. The variable of interest: whether the degree of knowledgeability of the previous participant affected the performance of the test subjects.

First Finding: subjects were more likely to heed the advice of the best performers. No surprise! 

The surprise: The best performers simply offered more advice, not advice that was better—and the amount of advice was taken by subjects as an indicator that the advice of the best performers was more worthwhile heeding.

What did I find of interest? It’s not the results per se, but rather the interpretation given by the authors. As they put it “the skills that are likely to make someone an excellent adviser—explicit knowledge of a domain and the ability to communicate that knowledge to someone who does not have it—are not necessarily the same skills that make someone an excellent performer. Those who can do are not always those who can teach… people seem to mistake quantity for quality.” The separation of expertise in a domain and ability to teach that domain to others is consistent with one of the criteria I used for the definition of intelligence—that it be separable from or independent of other abilities.

The authors suggest three reasons why advice from experts did not prove more helpful:

1. Highly skilled performers often execute their performances intuitively; natural talent and extensive practice may have made conscious thought unnecessary.

2. Even when an excellent performer does have knowledge to share, the performer may not be adept at sharing it.

3. Even when advice is good, the learner may not be able to follow it. Indeed, an excess of advice—no matter how applicable—can be crippling.

Of course, like all psychological research, with its share of contrivances, this study is limited in various ways. Ideally, one would want to look at instructions given by individuals who have varying degrees of expertise and of teaching experience, as well as learners with varying types and amounts of motivation. And if the sequelae of earlier ‘key experiments’ is relevant, with replication variations are likely occur in due course.

What pleases me is that researchers are now looking at the relation between expertise in performance of a set of skills and expertise in teaching that set of skills. In so doing, they may well shed light on the nature of pedagogical intelligence—and the extent to which it actually differs from already identified intelligences.

Reference

Levari, D., Gilbert, D., & Wilson, T. (2022). Tips From the Top: Do the Best Performers Really Give the Best Advice? Psychological Science, 33(5), 685-698. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976211054089

A “Smart” Lexicon

The following article by Howard Gardner was recently published in the Roeper Review (link here).

A “Smart” Lexicon

“John is so smart.”—“John’s a real dummy.”

In English, and no doubt in other languages as well, individuals have been so characterized for many centuries. Indeed, for at least a century, psychology has provided a way to measure “smartness” or “dumbness.” The IQ test provides a reasonable measure of how an individual is likely to do in school—particularly in a modern Western secular school. Of course, last year’s grades or class standing provide equally helpful (or damaging) predictions.

Shortly after the use of IQ tests became widespread, critiques of that form of instrumentation appeared. Sometimes, as in the case of psychologist David Wechsler (1944), the critiques came from within the psychometric community. At other times, as in the case of political commentator Walter Lippmann (1922), the critiques came from experts outside the profession.

A complementary language also emerged. In addition to being smart or intelligent or quick-witted, individuals could be characterized as talented. Perhaps John did not do well on an IQ test; but he may have been a talented artist, or humorist, or dancer, or mechanic, or salesperson.

Critiques moved into second gear when psychologists—including me—proposed alternative ways of thinking about intellect (Gardner, 1983/2011). As examples, Robert Sternberg (1985) proposed a triarchic theory of intellect, while David Olson (1996) spoke of skill with a medium. And most famously, building on the concepts and studies of Mayer et al. (2004), psychologist-journalist Daniel Goleman (1995) wrote about emotional intelligence and social intelligence.

Except perhaps in the vernacular (see the above characterizations of John) and within the psychometric community, the plurality of intelligence(s) is now widely acknowledged. We should say that “John is talented at school” or “John is not talented at this kind of school at this time.” And within school, we should say that “Jane is good at math but not at language,” or “Jane is good in history but not in physics” … or vice versa. I would go further—the distinction between “intelligence” and “talent” does not stand up to scrutiny. Either we should call all kinds of high abilities “talents” (including verbal and mathematical abilities) or we should call them all “intelligences.” There is no principled distinction between a talent and an intelligence.

In what follows, with the hope that they will be useful, I introduce further distinctions in the lexicon of unusual human performance(s):

• Gifted/prodigious/talented: In every form of intellect, some individuals will stand out from an early age. Some might be gifted in a particular area; others are so gifted in one or more areas—“off the charts”—that we call them prodigies (Feldman, 1986).

• Expert: In every known area of performance, there are adult standards for excellence. We call individuals who achieve those standards experts (Ericsson, 1986). One characteristic of individuals who are described as gifted is that they likely will reach a level of expertise or mastery at an early age.

Full stop: Giftedness and expertise pertain to spheres of knowledge and performances that are widely recognized within a society. The following pertains to performances that fall outside that categorization:

• Creative/Creativity: Some individuals and some performances move or even “hijack” domains of knowledge and practice in new directions. Such innovation can occur planfully or by accident. One can strive to be creative, and fail; one can engage in ordinary practice and find that one has in fact been creative.

  In any event, as formulated persuasively by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly (1988), creativity does not primarily reflect intent; it reflects achievement. Only if a performance is deemed notable by the relevant communities, and only if the performance actually affects the subsequent standards of that community, does it merit the descriptor “creative.”

  Importantly, intelligence(s) and creativity(ies) are not the same. One can be highly intelligent in a domain but not creative; or one can be creative without being especially intelligent (Guilford, 1967: Kaufman & Plucker, 2011).

So far, what I’ve written draws on earlier work by conceptualizers of unusual performance. Recently I have become interested in a human capacity in which I personally seem to have expertise—the capacity to synthesize (Gardner, 2020). My reflections have in turn suggested additions to the lexicon of extraordinary performances.

• Synthesis: The defining characteristic of synthesis is the capacity to draw on and put together various areas of knowledge in ways that are useful to oneself and to others. A classic example of a synthesis is a textbook in a particular subject matter or discipline.

  Syntheses differ in two ways: They can pull together strands within a specific area, say microeconomics, or cognitive psychology, or molecular biology; or they may seek to transcend such boundaries, synthesizing information from disparate fields such as syntheses of science and history, or literature and psychology.

• Degree of creativity: Most syntheses have modest goals. They attempt to put together existing materials in a useful way. But some syntheses go well beyond that goal and a few are highly creative. Darwin’s work on “the origin of species” is the gold standard. But more modest syntheses can also affect domains. Economics textbooks changed after the publication of Paul Samuelson’s textbook. Howard Zinn’s history of the United States has had analogous ramifications over the succeeding decades. And many of us are drawn to works of unusual synthesis—Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) or, more recently, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens (2015).

Here is a final entry in this lexicon.

• Polymath: We use this term to describe someone who is knowledgeable in two or more areas: for example, a student who scores high in all academic areas, a scientist who is an expert in biology, mathematics, and music, or a painter who is also a composer and a poet (Ahmed, 2019). Polymaths impress us, but they are not the same as synthesizers. The polymath knows many things, but may show neither inclination to draw them together, or no aptitude to do so. The synthesizer surveys or investigates many areas including ones in which (s)he has little training with the motivation to tie the strands together in an illuminating way.

  We might say that the synthesizer has a purpose in mind and needs a method to tie together lines of expertise. The polymath picks up knowledge easily and can display it readily but need not have either a purpose or method.

  Of course, polymaths who are also synthesizers are a valuable resource. Whether they can be detected at an early age, and whether those two forms of competence can be inculcated and intertwined over the course of development, is an important question, both for educators and for those concerned about the future of our planet. In both cases, of course, these talents need to be yoked to positive ends—in my terms, to the pursuit of good work and good citizenship.

Development in any area involves both differentiation and integration (Werner, 1957). Starting with the single construct of intelligence, psychologists and educators have proposed and provided evidence for various forms of cognition. In this analysis, I have proposed an additional form—synthesizing ability—and sought to begin the process of integration among the various forms of intellect.

References

Ahmed, W. (2019). The polymath. Wiley.

Csikszentmihaly, M. (1988). Society, culture, and person: A systems view of creativity. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The nature of creativity (pp. 325–339). Cambridge University Press.

Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, germs, and steel. Norton.

Ericsson, K. A. (1986). Expertise: The road to excellence. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Feldman, D. (1986). Nature’s gambit. Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (1983/2011). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (2020). A synthesizing mind. MIT Press.

Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. Bantam.

Guilford, J. P. (1967). The nature of human intelligence. McGraw Hill.

Harari, Y. (2015). Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. Harper.

Kaufman, J. C., & Plucker, J. (2011). Intelligence and creativity. In R. J. Sternberg & S. B. Kaufman (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of intelligence (pp. 771–783). Cambridge University Press.

Lippmann, W. (1922, November 8). The reliability of intelligence tests. New Republic, 32(414), 275–277.

Mayer, J., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. (2004). Emotional intelligence: Theory, findings, and implications. Psychological Inquiry, 15(3), 197–215.

Olson, D. (1996). Cognitive development: The child’s acquisition of diagonality. Taylor & Francis.

Sternberg, R. J. (1985). Beyond IQ. Cambridge University Press.

Wechsler, D. (1944). The measurement of adult intelligence. Williams & Wilkins.

Werner, H. (1957). Comparative psychology of mental development. International Universities Press.

Photo by Romain Vignes on Unsplash

A School Based on MI Principles

The following is an excerpt from the MI Network Newsletter edited by Dr. Tom Hoerr, former Head of The New City School, Missouri. Sign up for the newsletter here.

The theory of multiple intelligences is a statement about human potential because it recognizes that each of us has a profile of many different intelligences. 

But unfortunately, that isn’t the reality is how most schools operate. Too often educators limit their efforts to preparing students to succeed on the next test, to do well in a particular course, or to be accepted at the next school, and the focus becomes the scholastic intelligences, the 3 R’s. Teachers teach through the scholastic intelligences and they require students to indicate their knowledge and skills through those same 3 R’s. That narrow view of problem-solving creates a hierarchy of intelligences, with the 3 R’s at the top, while problem-solving using the other intelligences – musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, naturalist, and the personal intelligences – is relegated to after-school clubs, teams, or recess.

Certainly we want children to perform well in school, but how might education differ if the focus was on preparing students to succeed in life, not just to do well in school? It might look like what happens every day at The Howard Gardner School (HGS) in Alexandria, VA, founded by Katherine Keith and Emily Pavot in 2004.

I was particularly interested in talking with Erick Johnson, their Head of School, because the HGS is a middle- and a high school, for students in grades 6-12. I have met many educators who were implementing MI in their schools or classrooms, and in most cases, this was happening at the elementary level. That was my experience at the New City School, a preschool through elementary school in St. Louis, MO. In large part, this is because high school teachers tend to be subject matter specialists so it is more difficult for them to leave their comfort zone and use a range of intelligences in teaching. (Also, the rigid schedule of high schools makes it more difficult to create extended times so that students can use their range of intelligences.)

The faculty at HGS (students chose the school's name) recognizes that each person possesses an array of different – multiple – intelligences, and their curriculum is designed to tap into each child’s potential. The pragmatic and inclusive educational approach at The HGS is reflected in its mission statement:

It is the mission of The Howard Gardner School to help bright, creative, non-traditional learners use their unique strengths to thrive academically, intellectually, and emotionally.

Erick Johnson has a non-traditional background for an educator, i.e., he was trained as a litigation consultant and then became an Academic Success Coordinator for a school in Michigan. When we spoke, he shared his experiences as a football coach, and described a “diversity of athletes” as a way of capturing the range of ways players solve problems. While their strength, speed, and coordination (bodily-kinesthetic intelligence) were key, their ability to see situations and identify opportunities (spatial intelligence) and know how to follow, lead, and push themselves (personal intelligences) were also integral. His comment “Not everyone’s brain is the same” is true on playing fields and in the classroom.

The HGS is intentionally small, with 42 students in the high school and 13 in the middle school (the schools are two separate entities). This enables them to create non-traditional learning experiences that tap into and develop students’ many intelligences. The first week of every school year is a bonding time, an opportunity for students to learn about MI. Teachers present the theory and students engage in using all of their intelligences. Approximately forty percent of students’ time is spent outside classrooms, away from the school. Tuesdays are field trip days, and students will go on 36 trips during the school year, visiting power plants, national parks, national forests, and museums, for example. In almost every venue, he notes, docents and guides willingly share – teach – the students.

The pragmatic focus on what works for students is apparent in the non-traditional schedule at HGS. Students in grades 10 & 11 spend six to eight hours each Friday engaged in a professional internship. The entire school comes together for Community Fridays, times when students share what they have learned about themselves as learners. Erick says:

“Monday, Wednesday, Thursday morning are ‘standard’ days; Tuesdays  are  Field Studies; and Thursday afternoon is community meeting. The activities on Friday vary, based on students’ age/maturity.

“Community Fridays are for younger students to learn about themselves; Professional Internships are for older students ready to be in the adult world a bit more; Senior Fridays are about learning to be an elder in a community, tactical leadership/followership training, and schedule support for all the challenges that Seniors face (what's next? for instance), as well as "Packing the Suitcase" which is when students are helped to actively recognize what has helped them succeed to this point, and what they need to take with them wherever they go. Community Meetings are held on Thursday afternoon, they are student-run and handle community issues and community building.”

As a way to enable students to use MI to solve problems and show what they have learned, students create a symposium in the fall. (“Right before Thanksgiving break,” Erick says, “so folks have time to recover from the effort.”) Examples he offers:

• Renewable Energy Demonstration Conference

• Play-in-a-Week: Three Original One-Act Plays (including having to turn the school into a theatre, because we don't have one - this was the year the marketing team sold out a matinee that we didn't know existed)

• A Charity Bike Race (in fact, two races, one for speed, one for style - there's an "elephant" bike on top of the tech shed from that)

• Turned our Campus into a Nature Center 

• Pop-Up Restaurant (complete with a Maître D’ and his assistant, both in tuxedos, thus fulfilling my promise to the faculty of getting our smallest student into a top hat and tails)

• Single Shot, no Edit Action Movie

• Time Bureau: An Interactive Multi-Escape Room Adventure

The faculty always gives special attention to how are students feeling and thinking. An example of this awareness is that classes begin at 10 am each day. The goal is to help students become partners in the learning process, and that requires attention to their SEL as well as academic growth. He shares that the HGS graduates attend a diverse array of universities and programs and boast a 99% first-choice acceptance rate.

Erick says that human diversity in an organization enables progress from good to great, and MI is a positive example, recognizing students’ neuro-diversity. He likens this diversity to cogs in a wheel, latching together and creating some tension in order to gain movement. Students’ experiences at the HGS have been so positive that a second campus will be opening in the fall for students in grades 9-12. It will be on the border of Fairfax County, VA, and Loudoun County, VA, named, "HGS: Fairfax-Loudoun" with the current campus being "HGS: Alexandria." Readers who would like to learn more about the school can contact Erick Johnson at erick@thehowardgardnerschool.org.!