It’s Not How Smart You Are, It’s How Are You Smart?

My son and I just came back from a conference about education and home business.  In the next couple weeks, I will be blogging about what we’ve learned from the conference.

After several years of research, Harvard psychologist and educator Howard Gardner, discovered that one possesses at least eight distinct areas of intelligences when one acquires knowledge, processes information, learns and understands.

The question is NOT “How smart am I?”  It’s rather “HOW am I smart?

Gardner proposed the theory of multiple intelligences.  We each have eight kinds of smart inside us.  By examining what your child’s eight intelligences are, it will help him or her determine what kind of career he or she would enjoy.

1. Image Smart (visual-spatial intelligence) – involves such activities as painting, drawing, and sculpture; navigation, mapmaking and architecture, and games such as chess (which requires the ability to visualize objects from different perspectives and angles).
   
   • Careers:  interior decorator, graphic designers, photographers, airline pilots, painters, surgeons, and chefs.
     
2. Logic Smart (logical-mathematical intelligence) – most often associated with what we call “scientific thinking.” Logical-mathematical intelligence is activated in situations requiring problem-solving or meeting a new challenge.
   
   • Careers:  computers technicians, programmers, accountants, statisticians, and stock brokers.
     
3. Body Smart (bodily-kinesthetic intelligence) – the ability to use the body to express emotion, to play a game, to communicate with others using “body language” or create a new product
   • Careers:  gymnasts, physical therapists, choreographers, inventors, builders, dancers, and doctors.
4. Nature Smart (naturalist intelligence) – related to recognition, appreciation and understanding of the natural world around us.
   • Careers:  forest ranger, nature guide, animal keepers, landscape designers and gardeners.
5. Sound Smart (musical-rhythmic intelligence) – use of rhythmic and tonal patterns and sensitivity to sounds from the environment, human voice, and musical instruments.
   • Careers:  motion pictures sound creator, music teachers, piano tuners, song writers, and conductors.
6. Word Smart (verbal-linguistic intelligence) – responsible for the language and all the complex possibilities that follow, including poetry, humor, grammar, metaphors, similes, abstract reasoning, symbolic thinking and the written word.
   • Careers:  poets, public speakers, journalists, writers, speech pathologists, lawyers, editors, and proofreaders.
7. People Smart (interpersonal intelligence) – involves the ability to work a group, as well as the ability to communicate, verbally and non-verbally, with other people.
   • Careers:  teachers, arbitrators, administrators, anthropologists, organization leaders, and talk show hosts.
8. Self Smart (intrapersonal intelligence) – involves knowledge of the internal aspects of self, such as knowledge of feelings, the range of emotional responses, thinking processes, self-reflection, and a sense of or or intuition of spiritual realities.
   • Careers:  therapists, psychologists, philosophers, pastors, social workers, and counselors.

If you want to learn more about your own multiple intelligences, take a personal multiple intelligence (MiQ) smart profile online. You’ll see a color printable chart of how you rate in each of the eight kinds of smarts.
photo credit: {Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester}

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