One of the primary theories I was taught in teaching college was that of Howard Gardner’s ‘Theory of Multiple Intelligences’. This theory contends that we all have intelligences which could be categorized as having different characteristics, such as…let’s say: Visual-Spatial versus Verbal Linguistic intelligences. This was the hot topic for teachers in that lessons could be created to utilize these newfound means of getting to students.

This theory sounds like I good idea…

Of course there is little if any empirical evidence to support this theory, and even if there were, are these ‘intelligences’ innate or are they artifacts of gender, culture or socio-economic status? Nobody knows. This theory came out in the early 1980’s; it is taught to future teachers as if it were ‘true’.

As I said, I was confronted with these ideas when I was in college (only a couple years ago…), and the implication was for teachers to create ever more diverse lesson plans, to encompass these ideas, as well as a growing variety of other (untested or substantiated) ideas. I brought up a number of reasonable questions about these ideas, such as:

· If this theory has validity, why aren’t there any sort of tests for teachers to be able to see where there students fall into all of these categories?

· Why are we thinking only in terms of acquiescing to these ideas as a means to vary our teaching methods? Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to spend time teaching students how to learn in other (potentially more conventional) ways?

· Since colleges don’t teach using these theories, what will happen to our students upon graduation? Will we merely be making it harder for them in college?

I guess it’s not too much of a surprise that I was not given any answers to these questions. In one class an instructor gave me a book on the subject (the book was at least 20 years old…). Nonetheless, it was quite a nice gesture (to shut me up!).

In newspapers, magazines, the internet, TV, radio…in almost every kind of media I have access to; I see and hear all kinds of criticism of the education system in the USA. To be honest, I agree with much of it. There are quite a lot of structural problems with the current system we have. Amongst some of these problems (as I see them) are that teaches are under so little real scrutiny, but are held to an incredible array of (often) arbitrary standards.

In every job I have ever had in the private sector and even in the military, I have always been under a lot of scrutiny (read: real professional scrutiny). For beginning teachers, they can sometimes be observes by mentor teachers, department heads, or even some principals…occasionally. Merely being forced to hand in a week’s worth of lesson plans (every week) is a good means to develop some professional discipline, but doesn’t come close to mentorship or any serious form of overview.

Things were the same when I was a high school student (all those years ago). There were some great teachers, some good teachers, and so forth on down to the topic area ‘which we teachers don’t talk about’ (just like now). And as with then, the problem with teacher ‘tenure’ is that it allows settled teachers to become almost autonomous in how they conduct their daily business. I always thought that tenure was in place to ensure academic freedom in publishing.

How many K-12 teachers publish?

There are plenty of other problems to address, which may even outrank this small peccadillo in how the education business ‘management/labor conflict paradigm’s still reign. If you are interested a simple Google search should bring you plenty of articles supporting any number of positions on this debacle.

For me, I don’t think that either side makes that much of a difference, in that they are both positions which only support differing bureaucracies. I can’t for the life of me, see how either of them can help in educating our children.

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