“Intelligence is an ability to solve problems or to create products that are valued within one or more cultural setting” - - Howard Gardner
                                            
Intelligence

Intelligence is a property of mind that encompasses many related mental abilities, such as the capacities to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn.
The theory is an account of human cognition in its fullness. The intelligences provided 'a new definition of human nature, cognitively speaking'. Human beings are organisms who possess a basic set of intelligences.
People have a unique blend of intelligences. Howard Gardner argues that the big challenge facing the deployment of human resources 'is how to best take advantage of the uniqueness conferred on us as a species exhibiting several intelligences'.
These intelligences, according to Howard Gardner, are amoral - they can be put to constructive or destructive use.
He points out that school systems often focus on a narrow range of intelligence that involves primarily verbal/linguistic and logical/mathematical skills. While knowledge and skills in these areas are essential for surviving and thriving in the world, he suggests that there are at least six other kinds of intelligence that are important to fuller human development and that almost everyone has available to develop. They include visual/spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, naturalist and intrapersonal intelligence.

The strongest skills of many children lie in these six areas, which are frequently undervalued in some traditional schools. The fact is that when children have an opportunity to learn through their strengths, they may become more successful at learning all subjects--including the "basic skills."

Gardner believes that the eight intelligences he has identified are independent, in that they develop at different times and to different degrees in different individuals. They are, however, closely related, and many teachers and parents are finding that when an individual becomes more proficient in one area, the whole constellation of intelligence may be enhanced.

For this reason, we believe that it is important to encourage children to explore and exercise all of their intelligences. Creating a rich, nurturing, and stimulating environment filled with interesting materials, toys, games, and books lays the foundation for healthier, happier, brighter children!  Students who have these kinds of experiences know many ways to learn almost anything!

Following are some characteristics of the different intelligences:

Kinesthetic - Body Smart
You may be body smart. You will enjoy sports and are good at swimming, athletics, gymnastics and other sports. This is sometimes called being kinesthetic smart.  

Skills include:
Dancing, physical co-ordination, sports, hands on experimentation, using body language, crafts, acting, miming, using their hands to create or build, expressing emotions through the body

Possible career paths:
Athletes, physical education teachers, dancers, actors, firefighters, artisans

Linguistic - Word Smart
You may be word smart. You will enjoy reading, writing and talking about things. This is sometimes called being Linguistic smart.  

Skills include:
Listening, speaking, writing, story telling, explaining, teaching, using humor, understanding the syntax and meaning of words, remembering information, convincing someone of their point of view, analyzing language usage.

Possible career Paths:
Poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, translator

Logical - Number Smart
You may be number smart. You will be good at mathematics and other number activities; you are also good at solving problems. This is sometimes called being Logical smart.  

Skills include:
Problem solving, classifying and categorizing information, working with abstract concepts to figure out the relationship of each to the other, handling long chains of reason to make local progressions, doing controlled experiments, questioning and wondering about natural events, performing complex mathematical calculations, working with geometric shapes

Possible career paths:
Scientists, engineers, computer programmers, researchers, accountants, mathematicians

Interpersonal - People Smart
You may be people smart. You will like to mix with other people and you will belong to lots of clubs. You like team games and are good at sharing. This is sometimes called being Interpersonal smart. 

Skills include:
Seeing things from other perspectives (dual-perspective), listening, using empathy, understanding other people's moods and feelings, counseling, co-operating with groups, noticing people's moods, motivations and intentions, communicating both verbally and non-verbally, building trust, peaceful conflict resolution, establishing positive relations with other people.

Possible Career Paths:
Counselor, salesperson, politician, business person

Intrapersonal - Myself Smart
You may be myself smart. You will know about yourself and your strengths and weaknesses. You will probably keep a diary. This is sometimes called being Intrapersonal smart.  
Skills include:
Recognizing their own strengths and weaknesses, reflecting and analyzing themselves, awareness of their inner feelings, desires and dreams, evaluating their thinking patterns, reasoning with themselves, understanding their role in relationship to others

Possible Career Paths:
Researchers, theorists, philosophers

Musical - Music Smart
You may be music smart. You will enjoy music and can recognize sounds, and timbre, or the quality of a tone. This is sometimes called being Musical smart. 

Skills include:
Singing, whistling, playing musical instruments, recognizing tonal patterns, composing music, remembering melodies, understanding the structure and rhythm of music

Possible career paths:
Musician, disc jockey, singer, composer

Visual/Spatial - Picture Smart
You may be picture smart. You will be good at art and also good at other activities where you look at pictures like map reading, finding your way out of mazes and graphs. This is sometimes called being Visual/Spatial smart.  

Skills include:
Puzzle building, reading, writing, understanding charts and graphs, a good sense of direction, sketching, painting, creating visual metaphors and analogies (perhaps through the visual arts), manipulating images, constructing, fixing, designing practical objects, interpreting visual images.

Possible career Paths:
Navigators, sculptors, visual artists, inventors, architects, interior designers, mechanics, engineers.

Naturalistic - Nature Smart
You may be nature smart. You will like the world of plants and animals and enjoy learning about them. This is sometimes called being Naturalistic smart.

Skills include:
?    Have keen sensory skills - sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.
?    Readily use heightened sensory skills to notice and categorize things from the natural world.
?    Like to be outside, or like outside activities like gardening, nature walks or field trips geared toward observing nature or natural phenomena.
?    Notice patterns easily from their surroundings -- likes, differences, similarities, anomalies.
?    Are interested and care about animals or plants.
?    Notice things in the environment others often miss.
?    Create, keep or have collections, scrapbooks, logs, or journals about natural objects -- these may include written observations, drawings, pictures and photographs or specimens.
?    Are very interested, from an early age, in television shows, videos, books, or objects from or about nature, science or animals.
?    Show heightened awareness and concern of the environment and/or for endangered species.
?    Easily learn characteristics, names, categorizations and data about objects or species found in the natural world.

While the answers to understanding the educational popularity of MI Theory fully undoubtedly lie in many directions, the key issues to comprehending the theory's burgeoning acceptance seem to be related to the basic needs of teachers as they try to create more inclusive, affective and effective instruction. These basic teaching needs are primarily related to promoting understanding and appreciation among students, to creating classrooms where learners experience a sense of loving and belonging, to issues of fostering pupils' esteem, personal intellectual empowerment and self-motivation, and to helping teachers achieve more diversified instructional techniques. Simply, MI Theory has taken hold in classrooms across the United States because it helps educators meet the needs of many different types of learners easily, and because it reflects teachers' and parents' deeply rooted philosophical beliefs that all children possess gifts and that part of the most important mission of schools is to foster positive personal development. Thus, teachers understanding and using MI theory, and its related educational frameworks and explanations of diversity, are being transformed into teachers who understand human patterns, human diversity and human learning at better, deeper, and more comprehensive levels.
I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so that they will be positioned to make it a better place. Knowledge is not the same as morality, but we need to understand if we are to avoid past mistakes and move in productive directions. An important part of that understanding is knowing who we are and what we can do... Ultimately, we must synthesize our understandings for ourselves. The performance of understanding that try matters are the ones we carry out as human beings in an imperfect world which we can affect for good or for ill. (Howard Gardner 1999)