Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About Smarter
Q. What does the term 'Smarter' mean?
A. Smarter is an acronym that I developed in the early 1960's standing for successful minds are really the end result. For forty (40) years, Smarter has helped me deal with those who see the world differently. In 1966, as a beginning teacher, I used the saying to aid me as I assessed and instructed state-funded public elementary and secondary school regular and special students. I found the tool extremely meaningful during one-on-one counseling sessions with special education students, their integrated classroom teachers and their parents. Often, conventional instruction and mainstream assessment procedures were unsuccessful when dealing with this exceptional school population. In 1969, as an elementary school principal, I used the same concept to help me guide students and school teaching staff towards a better understanding of themselves and their cerebral capacities. In 1975, when I began teaching secondary school pupils, I again realized that Smarter well displayed the positive side of numerous problem learners, especially early- and mid-adolescents involved in serious social situations. I was often able to use Smarter to convince certain girls and boys that life was indeed worth living. And in 1985, when I began attending graduate school, Smarter seemed to best represent my way to measure the intellectual performances of others. To this day, I continue to utilize Smarter to change doom and gloom perceptions of reality towards a boom and zoom quest for living.
Q. How did the Smarter model of the mind evolve?
A. During the middle 1950's and early 1960's, I was trained, like most others, to believe that the conventional ways of teaching and administering to a singular subject's intelligences was the end result. In other words, I observed everyone as either quite smart, average or extremely stupid, nothing more ... nothing less! Or to coin terminology from the mainstream school of assessing cognitive capabilities, the intelligence quotient (IQ) test was the best way (supposedly) to calculate such smarts. Successful stars of the day (Elvis Presley and The Beatles) and today (50Cent and U2) were not intelligent but merely quite talented in the domain-specific content arena called music. Over time, I gradually came to view this "eye-cure" or negative conception of our minds, as invalid, impractical and irrelevant for overall everyday learning. To comprehend better the viewpoint that the human mind was not a static state but an ongoing dynamic module consisting of "many kinds of minds", I enrolled in graduate school; there, I began to read and write about various mental models and, more specifically, the different interpretations of the psychological construct termed 'intelligence.' I read the writings of various educators, philosophers and psychologists, finally settling on the multiple intelligences (MI) model as theorized by the Harvard University cognitive developmental psychologist, Howard Gardner. To this day, I continue to use this model ... a model of the human mind too good to drop!
Q. What does the expression 'Thinking Smarter not Harder' mean?
A. The expression "Thinking Smarter not Harder" suggests that it takes no additional effort, or no more thinking, for anyone to solve a problem from a broader Multiple Intelligences (MI) perspective than it does to solve the same problem from a narrow intelligence quotient (IQ) stance. All we have to do is to 'view' ourselves as holders of eight (8) forms of intelligences, not just two (2) forms (linguistic-verbal and logical-mathematical). In fact, it's actually easier to look at ourselves as more or less dominant in a wide range of cognitive capacities because now we have a "many intelligences perspective" from which to select our daily cerebral competences.