Gardner's Seven Attributes of Intelligence: An Analysis

Ever since Spearman proposed the intelligence theory with G factor, there were several other intelligence theories proposed in response or as an alternative to Spearman’s. Among those, Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence and Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory would be the most influential ones as they are widely accepted and used in real life. Both of the theories share a critical view towards the unitary perspective which is the traditional definition of intelligence. However, the two theories differ in which they don’t agree with what factors should be the measures of intelligence, as well as the emphasis of the two theories.

It is commonly believed that people differ in various ways, and these individual differences play a detrimental role on their behaviour at work. To be more specific, individual differences include two kernel factors which refers to intelligence and personality. It is clear that individual differences are important in determining behaviour, however, there are other external factors which are equally important, such as working environment or culture within an organisation.

I believe that parents, teachers, and district officials need to be made aware of how background and family education factor into a child’s achievement. Once there is an understanding at a local level then we can begin to persuade state officials to recognize this. Nevertheless, you could still have people who refuse to advocate for this even when they know that it is an issue. In this, I am reminded of our reading earlier in the semester from Ezra Klein. Even when people know the truth, they may continue to do nothing simply because of their political parties. Rather than morally and ethically seeing the inequality perpetuated in the school system by people’s socioeconomic statuses, government official refuse due to their party

The United States education system presents proposed education reforms with the intention of strengthening the education system for all American students. The United States seeks to teach children with a focus on quality education, creativity and critical thinking, and self-development and empowerment; preparing students to be active and engaged citizens. The United States has built a foundation of universal education; unlike many other countries, all American children are entitled to a free and public education. Children are ensured an education in the United States regardless of disability, socioeconomic status, academic achievement, or immigrant status. Despite intentions to provide high quality education for all students there are areas in which the United States falls short compared to our neighbors nationally. As Andreas Schleicher, a scientist with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development states, it is in our benefit to look “outside for ways to improve, questioning the established wisdom” (Ripley, 2016).

American core values of individualism and equality both have a stake in the education of Americans. This is individualism as in the right to seek out “personal initiative and self-sufficiency,” which is often referred to as our desire to gain economic independence, and for the other, equality, it is stated as “the notion that all individuals are equal in their moral worth and thereby entitled to equal treatment under the law,” (Patterson, 2013, p. 10). This can stand for the equal treatment and opportunities that students should be given in public schools, which would require equal coursework and examinations (Patterson, 2013, p.

Teacher training is focusing less and less on how to approach impoverished children in a manner that would encourage them to put the effort in school. There is a well known and adapted theory in the American School System called Theory of Compromised Human Development, in which it set the bar for the way children are evaluated. This theory does not take into account children who are neither white nor in the middle socioeconomic class. Due to this, the theory is said to oversimplify the understanding of development, which in turn places minority and impoverished children at a “heightened risk for special education placement”(O’Connor). This theory is categorizing every child below the poverty line no matter what their real talent might be. This

Upon completing the Intelligence Assessment, the results concluded I have room for improvement for others emotions. One way I can honestly say I can improve this area is by being more sensitive to others feelings and emotions. I am the type of person when I have my mind made up for something and others don’t seem to agree, I could care less about what they feel or think. In other to improve this area, when dealing with these types of situations, I think I should think twice before reacting and I should also think about it from both perspectives.

America is known as immigrant country, which the U.S is a diverse society. We have people of many different races living together. Although U.S is a diverse society, but some of the immigrants are not allowing their children to be “Americanized”. People who lived in United States, except for the Native Americans, are all immigrants. Many poor Europeans came to United States for freedom in the 1800s. America were supposed to become a melting pot which to mix all race together. However, now United States is seems like a salad bowl, which even immigrants have become American, they still kept some of their culture. That’s the reasons why we can see many cities have Korea towns, Chinatowns and Italian quarters. There are different ethnic groups, but they are all American. However, as time goes on, there are more and more immigrant students adopt American cultural and study in the American way. However, privilege the Whites and stereotyping minority group of students still is a big issue in school. How well students does in school depends on how the student is treated in school. There are students of different class and ethnicity who struggle to assimilate into the U.S education standards. In order to solve this problem, families and school must work together. School needs to educate not only students and also their guardians on what they can do to help their child to be successful.

“Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends,” remarked Benjamin Disraeli. In the United States of America, we need to focus on education to prepare the next generation for leadership. Unfortunately, the U.S. has a widening socioeconomic status-based achievement gap (Huang, 2015, p. 1). This means that not all children are receiving the same quality of education they deserve, thus our country is not adequately preparing them for their future. In spite of the belief that all schools are adequately funded and all students have the same opportunities for success, the American government should increase funding for the education of children from low socioeconomic backgrounds to eliminate the achievement

Santrok (2014) lists Gardner’s eight intelligences and states that children have all of the intelligences however they have their own strengths and weaknesses. Whereas Sobel & Li (2013) describe each of the eight intelligences in detail, and rather than asserting that the intelligences are used by every individual, Sobel and Li state that Gardner focuses on “unusual development or lack of unusual development of given abilities” (Sobel & Li, 2013, p.18).

Many Americans have this idea in their head that in order to be someone in this world you need a strong education, which will help you get a well paying job. However, many people believe that this idea of a “strong education” is actually destroying our kids. According to many philosophers they’re two crises that are endangering the American education system. One “crisis” being that school is taking away from a child’s individualism, the other being that the education system is falling behind. The two are very different and both have many strategies to solve them, which we have discussed during the semester.

“One of the first lessons I learned as a teacher was that social class, race, ethnicity, and gender have a powerful effect on the process of education. I found to be blunt, that even in the schools of nation that prides itself on equality of opportunity, some students are more equal than others” (Newman, 2006, p.269). Minority children and those living in poverty are at disadvantage in our education system. Several studies make this clear. A study by Sean Rearden that looked at test scores over a 55-year period found that the achievement gap between students in the 90th percentile and the 10th percentile for income

One might dare to define intelligence as the ability to obtain and apply knowledge and skills, or as the capacity to learn, comprehend, or deal with new or difficult situation in order to adapt to or modify our environment or to process abstract thoughts. However, on a paper defined by Shane and Hutter as "a survey of a large number of informal definitions of “intelligence” that [they] collected over the years (A Collection of Definitions, 2007)," the authors acknowledged that "a complete list would be impossible as many definitions of intelligence are buried deep inside articles and books (idem)." Beyond their own recognition about the limits of their compilation, even after careful analysis carried out by philosophers, psychologists and other scientists throughout human history, still there is not a definite, cover-all definition of intelligence. Maybe we still do not possess sufficient intelligence to reach such achievement at this point of our evolution.

Ever since the start of the twentieth century, America has been a nation with great prestige. The United States is looked upon as a model country throughout the world for its freedom, riches, enterprise, “God given rights”, and beautiful sights. Millions of immigrants, every year, have taken refuge throughout the great country to provide a suitable life for themselves and their children. America is seen as a country with greater and brighter opportunities than most. Unfortunately, it is questionable that our children are truly inevitable to achieving a refine future? A person’s childhood, more specifically the years he or she spend attending school, build the stepping stones and are the foundation to his or her future characteristics and achievement. Subjecting a child to the best of educations will logically lead to a prosperous life, but unfortunately that is not the case for many United States’ students. Poor student achievement caused by even poorer pedagogical preparation has lead to stunting future success for students and undermining the great country. Statistics show that American students have fallen significantly behind in math and science compared to students in other industrialized countries. In order for American students to prosper and compete with top nations like South Korea and Finland, it is imperative for our teacher preparation system to adopt methods that schools of education use there.

Intelligence tests are set and used to measure an individual’s general mental ability. In other words, unlike the tests and exams we take at school, intelligence tests test our intellectual potential rather than accumulated knowledge (Weiten & McCann, 2016). A key component to intelligence testing is looking at an individual’s mental age which is the mental development of a person relative to others (Tsuji, 2016). In 1904 Alfred Binet was asked to design a test that would identify children that are considered to be mentally subnormal (Weiten & McCann, 2016). Along with Theodore Simon, Binet created the first test of mental ability in 1905 (Weiten & McCann, 2016). He later revised the scale created to identify a child’s mental age in order to have a better judgement (Weiten & McCann, 2016). Following his death, other psychologist continued to build on the work he had begun this includes Lewis Terman and others at Stanford University. In 1916 the Stanford-Binet intelligence scale was published which stayed true to the original concept but used a new scoring method using the intelligence quotient (IQ) (Weiten & McCann, 2016).