MI-News, Fall 2000, Volume 2, Number 3

Table of contents

1  For your intelligences only by Clifford Morris
2  MI theory and the workplace by Howard Gardner
3  Interpreting the MIDAS profile as Part of a psychological evaluation by Branton Shearer
4  In praise of black sheep by Johann Christoph Arnold
5  Technological means, human ends by Howard Gardner

1 For your intelligences only by Clifford Morris

Welcome readers to the Fall 2000 issue of the MI-News.  We hope that you have had an enjoyable summer.  For continued readers, thanks for your ongoing assistance and input. For those of you who are visiting for the first time, welcome aboard the MI train.  MI-News is provided free by Dr. Charles Branton Shearer's Multiple Intelligences (MI) Research and Consulting.  The goal of the MI-News is to provide you with theoretical and practical information about Howard Gardner's MI Theory.  We try to explore MI applications via discussion, contact and sharing.

We begin this opening section with a slight twist by listing some interesting internet web sites highlighting general intelligences, and more specifically, sites outlining Multiple Intelligences (MI) web locations.  We hope that you will find them practical.  If you have your own favorite MI site, not listed here, and in your opinion, of value to other MI colleagues, please email me (cmorris@igs.net) with its internet address.  I'll then add such web site locations to the following.

Scientific American's Winter 1998 Special Issue: Exploring Intelligence

In the Winter of 1998, Scientific American published a special issue (Vol. 9, No. 4) titled Exploring Intelligence.  In the introductory article, Intelligence Considered, the issue's editor, Philip Yam, searches for a definition of intelligence as he asks "What does it mean to have brainpower?" and "Can such brainpower be measures, quantified and changed?"

If you're a novice to the field of intelligence, then perhaps this issue is your best starting point.  Its 105 pages consists of five sections: Introduction, Human Intelligence, Animal Intelligence, Machine Intelligence, and Extraterrestrial Intelligence.  More to our interest, the section on Human Intelligence contains, amongst others, excellent articles by Robert J. Sternberg, Howard E. Gardner, and Linda S. Gottfredson.  On the one hand, Sternberg and Gardner theorize broader forms of intelligence.  On the other hand, Gottfredson continues to foster the general intelligence factor, or 'g' viewpoint.  To view some of these excellent articles, click here.

Editorial Comment: Some References on Multiple Intelligences

As often mentioned in earlier issues, I have been reading and writing about the Gardner model of intelligence since 1985.  During these 15 years I have assembled research references, that is, a name index and a subject index on those associated with all forms of human intelligences.  For ease of use, I have grouped these works under 20 alphabetical titles, commencing with "A", "B", "C" ... and concluding with "UV", "W", "XYZ".  Wherever possible, I have linked psychologists and educators to specific Internet locations.  To visit this reference page, click here.

You will note that I have listed some names (and their web sites links) associated with the Multiple Intelligences Theory (MIT) of Howard Earl Gardner (HEG).  Here are directions to five examples from the "A" alphabetical listing.  First, go to the "A" alphabetical listing, and then to the following five (5) links:

1. Click on the first link, About Howard Gardner, at http://www.igs.net/~cmorris/heg99.html

2. Click on the second link, Adult Education and MI, at http://adulted.about.com/education/adulted/.  In the "Search for" horizontal box, located near the top of the page, type in either "Howard Gardner", "Multiple Intelligences", or "Howard Gardner and Multiple Intelligences."

3. Click on the third link: "American Education Network Corporation (AENC)", at http://www.aenc.org/ABOUT/7Int-Inter.html

4. Scroll down to the seventh listing: "American Educational Research Association (AERA): Multiple Intelligences Special Interest Group (MI-SIG)", at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Column/7568/index.html

5.  Scroll down to the fourth title up from the bottom of the list, namely "Armstrong, Thomas", at:
http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.htm

Here is a list of others (Surname, Intital name) who have developed meaningful programs et al around HEG's MIT. Use the above way to go to them. For example, go to the "B" alphabetical list to see "Bolanos, Patricia."  The list is not complete.  If you have the names of others that you feel are of equal value, please email them to me at cmorris@igs.net.  I'll add them to my list for all to see and use.

Bolanos, Patricia
Chapman, Carolyn
Diaz-Lefebvre, René
Gardner, Howard
Hoerr, Thomas
Lazear, David
MI at Indiana University
MI & Learning Styles
Multiple Intelligences
MI Smart Program
MI Tool Room
MI-News (This newsletter)
MI & New Horizons
MI & New Horizons Bookshelf for Learning
MI Presentations
MI & Something to Think About
MI & Task Cards
MI & Theatre in Motion
MI & The World
MI & Writing
Shearer, Charles, Branton
Weber, Ellen
Yam, Philip

Educational Leadership Journal Articles on Multiple Intelligences

Do you prefer reading the full text on-line version of practical, well written and interesting articles outlining meaningful applications of the Gardner MI model?  If you do, then you'll enjoy being a member of the Association for Curriculum and Development (ASCD).  ASCD offers members opportunities to work on current issues and trends in education. Through publications, consortiums, conferences, and video-based staff development programs, educators have access to various perspectives in modern education, both locally and internationally.

All members (@U$ 49.00) receive the Educational Leadership journal, Education Update Newsletter, Curriculum Update Newsletter, and complete information on other ASCD resources. In addition, Regular Members (@U$ 69.00) receive two books per year. Comprehensive Members (@U$ 79.00) receive five books each year. Premium Members (@U$189.00) receive nine books a year, a key for one PD online course, the Curriculum Technology Quarterly newsletter, ASCD issues briefings, a voucher to be used toward a professional development institute, and an ASCD resources diskette.  The internet web site for ASCD is http://www.ascd.org

Teaching and Learning Through the Multiple Intelligences

Since 1994, The Chariho Regional School District, serving the communities of Charlestown, Richmond, and Hopkinton in southern Rhode Island, has supported a program designed to nurture the innate talents and abilities of all types of learners.  The basis of their present Gifted and Talented Program is on teaching and learning through Gardner's MI.  The program has became known as the M.I. Smart! Program, with "Smart" being an easy way for children to understand that they are all smart in many different ways.  The internet address is http://www.chariho.k12.ri.us/curriculum/MISmart/mi_smart.htm

2 MI theory and the workplace by Howard Gardner

Reprinted with Permission of the Author from
Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century
Basic Books, 1999

We are, again, privileged to bring you two more excerpts from Howard Gardner's second 1999 book Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century.  Here is his first excerpt.

Up to this point, I have committed the sin of lumping a myriad of enterprises together under the single label of "business."  Of course, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of kinds of businesses, each with its peculiar mission and problems.  Just like no two people are exactly alike, no two businesses are identical.  MI theory was devised as a description of individuals, based on their evolutionary past and their survival in ecological and cultural niches.  It is not self-evident that organizations exhibit the same intelligences as individuals, nor that they create and lead in the same ways.  But the corporation itself was set up in direct analogy to the person, and it is at least worth considering whether one might profitably think of business individually and collectively as having multiple intelligences that can be nurtured and deployed more or less productively.

Sectors and Roles

As a start in disaggregating the terrain of business, I suggest two primary distinctions.  The first has to do with the sphere or sector, the second with the roles performed within each sector. Obviously, businesses are involved with diverse products and services.  Some make products that go directly to the consumer, some make products that are used in making other products, and some deal in direct services (like those handled by a bank teller, an airplane steward, or a nurse) or in indirect services (like doing accounting or scheduling airlines).  An increasing number of businesses deal with information per se (for example, compiling statistics about the weather or the preferences of customers in different zip-code areas); are involved chiefly in finance (buying and selling money); or manage aspects of other businesses (consulting, acquisitions and mergers, creation of computer networks and Web pages, and feedback on consumer preferences).

Focusing on sectors suggests one business application for MI ways of thinking.  Sectors that deal primarily with communication use language and other symbol systems.  Those that deal primarily with finance, accounting, or science draw on logical-mathematical intelligence.  Sectors that interact with the public highlight the personal intelligences.  There are businesses that explore the other intelligences: The entertainment business highlights musical and other artistic intelligences; athletics, arts, and crafts focus on bodily-kinesthetic intelligence; business involved in navigation, transportation, advertising, or graphics feature spatial intelligence; businesses that have contact with the environment, plants, animals, textiles, and ecology exploit the naturalistic intelligence; businesses that deal with career guidance, self-knowledge, self-transformation address intrapersonal intelligence; and businesses that focus on spiritual matters, matters of personal or communal identity address existential intelligence.

Of course, just as intelligences differ from scholarly domains, there is no one-to-one correspondence between sectors and intelligences.  Any sector can make use of the range of intelligences.  Moreover, people with varying strengths in the intelligences are free to gravitate to whatever sector they like, depending upon interest, passion, or training.  Still, one should not lump all businesses together but instead consider the specific content of the major traditional sectors as well as emerging ones.

The second major distinction pertains to the different roles present in businesses.  Most businesses have leadership and management positions, plus a variety of departments: human resources, production, accounting, finance, marketing, sales, customer relations, philanthropy, and community outreach.  As noted in chapter 8, leaders generally rely especially on linguistic, personal, and existential intelligences, whereas managers avoid the existential issues--unless they want to become leaders but need to be strong in other intelligences, the specific intelligence reflecting the work of their department.

Going beyond these structural roles, it is easy to match niches to intelligences. For those involved in human resources, sales, customer relations, and marketing, knowledge of other people is key.  Human resource workers may have to exploit existential intelligence when dealing with health and other crises or with hiring and firing, issues that involve fundamental tensions and dilemmas of existence.  Logical-mathematical intelligence is essential for workers in accounting and finance.  Marketing, advertising, and product design people rely on aspects of their aesthetic intelligences, particularly poetic language, musical forms, and the growing panoply of graphic, video, and pictorial devices.  Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence is necessary for those involved directly with production or the handling of products, and graceful bodily movements prove valuable for those who wish to put others at ease in meetings and other personal contacts.

At first, it may seem that including naturalist intelligence is a stretch, except in industries that deal with plants and animals.  But I believe that naturalist intelligence is extremely important in the business world.  Commercial businesses exploit the smallest perceptible difference in products to convince consumers that they should go to MacDonald's rather than Burger King, drive a Ford rather than a Plymouth, or jog in Nikes instead of Adidas shoes.  We are capable of making the necessary perceptible distinctions among products because of our naturalist intelligence. Although we did not evolve to be able to discriminate between two similar man-made objects, the ability to discriminate depends on precisely those evolved mechanisms that allow us to know which plants to eat and which to spurn, which animals to pursue and which to run away from.  These capacities have, as it were, been "hijacked" by the world of commerce.  Without naturalist intelligence we can neither participate in the creation of these products nor, perhaps happily, fall prey to advertisers and marketer blandishments.

Across business sectors and functions, the full range of intelligences should be employed.  This assertion challenges the prevailing idea that there is a single "business intelligence"---an assumption rarely made explicitly, but entrenched in a "business school way of thinking."  (Indeed, if there were a business IQ, it would no doubt sample a wide set of skills and abilities.) Business schools highlight linguistic and logical intelligences, and students who excel in these areas are recruited by major corporations.  This classical view of intelligence has always its place in business.  And if the "symbol analyst" remains important in the businesses of tomorrow, then the role of linguistic and logical intelligence cannot be minimized.  But as I have argued with respect to schooling, we need to be more flexible in considering the roles and functions valued in the business world.  Each of the intelligences can be marshaled in an entrepreneurial environment, and the roles most crucial in business should be assumed by people who have varying blends of intelligences.

For those involved in hiring, promoting, and firing, clear implications follow.  It does not make sense to judge people in terms of a single set of dimensions. Rather, one should attempt to learn as much as possible about candidate's and employees' favored ways of thinking and problem solving, and use this knowledge to hire and train people, to set up teams, and to make critical decisions about reployment, advancement, and termination.  In some cases, information about intelligences can be secured thorough self-report or recommendations. In other cases, simple tasks or assignments can reveal candidate's favored intelligences.

When it comes to actual methods of selecting employees in the future, all bets are off.  For some time, it has been true that people with the most formal credentials or the longest resume have the easiest time gaining and maintaining employment.  But credentials are expensive, and they may not be necessary for accomplishing a job.

Traditionally, credentials have signaled that a person has carried out the requisite studies or has performed the required tasks in other comparable business settings.  In the future, however, it should be possible to devise computer-based simulations that will show, with a high degree of accuracy, whether an individual will be able to carry out the job for which he or she is applying.  This process could be carried out not only with respect to professions---arguing a legal case, performing surgery---but also with respect to various business roles---designing a product, creating a marketing strategy, or even conducting a delicate meeting.  Should it turn out that only those who have credentials or documented experience can handle these situations, then hiring will proceed as it has in the past.  But if it turns out that people without such expensive backgrounds can perform well, or nearly as well, on simulations, costly credentials may not be so important.  A cost-conscious business community may turn instead to self-trained experts.

From the perspective of MI theory, what is important is whether people can do their jobs, not what particular intelligences they happen to be applying.  To the extent that professional schools require admissions or exit tests that measure intelligences only marginally important for core functions, schools will either have to change or close, yielding to institutions that can develop the desired skills more directly.

While acknowledging the differences between business and educational settings, it should be possible to draw inspiration from some of the educational interventions discussed in earlier chapters.  For example, recruiters can make use of informal assessments of intelligence, or can even create Spectrum-style settings where relevant intellectual strengths can be assessed in a naturalistic setting. On-the-job training and retraining can certainly make use of our knowledge of various entry points, analogies, and ways of representing the key concepts in a role or task.  Finally, those involved in promoting or transferring personnel will benefit from records, self-reports, or on-line experiments that reveal the particular intellectual configurations of employees.

Business and the Personal Intelligences

An awareness of the intelligences involved in different business sectors and roles is significant.  But other aspects of multiple intelligences may be even more important---those involving the personal intelligences.

While I am primarily a teacher and a scholar, during the nearly thirty years that I have codirected Harvard's Project Zero, I have supervised dozens of research projects and hundreds of gifted young researchers, and can reasonably say that I have been raising funds for and managing a small, nonprofit organization.  Two decades ago, when I chose personnel, I looked for people like me. But studying the personal intelligences has taken me in new directions. I now rarely look for individuals with skills like mine. Instead, I ask these questions:

  • What skills or intelligences are needed for particular roles, and particularly for new ones?
  • Who on my staff already has these skills or intelligences?  Who could readily acquire them?
  • Who can work well with a person who has a particular profile of intelligences and fulfills a certain role?
  • Which persons, or kinds of persons, can train others in new skills?
  • How will a project benefit from different mixes of individuals?
    • Not only do these questions bring to the fore people who work well with others, who are strong in the personal intelligences---the entire way of thinking also becomes more person-centered. They ask about individual strengths and probe how these strengths can be mobilized to create effective work groups and bring out the best in each person. And they also ask individuals, including me, to think about our own profile of intelligences, how we interact with others, and to use Peter Drucker's apt phrase---how we manage ourselves.

    Businesses used to be set up so that employees would remain with them indefinitely; indeed, it was assumed that people who did their jobs well had lifetime employment.  But for at least fifteen years, these assumptions have not held true in the United States; and with every new economic twist in Europe, Asia, or Latin America, they are undermined further. In this rapidly changing environment, the role of intrapersonal intelligence becomes increasingly important---indeed, essential. When people did the same work as their predecessors, self-knowledge was a luxury, if not a burden. Given today's extreme fluidity of jobs, roles, and preferences, it is essential that people have an accurate, up-to-date, and flexible understanding of their own desires, needs, anxieties, and optimal ways of learning. People with particularly strong intrapersonal intelligence are prized in the business world because they can make optimal use of heir talents, especially under rapidly changing conditions, and they know best how to mesh their talents with those of their coworkers. In contrast, those with inaccurate self-perceptions behave in nonproductive ways, personally or professionally, and are a burden to a company. It is easier to fire such people than to try to instruct them in knowledge of self.

    Unfortunately, we don't know a lot about the personal intelligences. We do not understand their operations well, we do not know how to measure these intelligences, and we are not skilled at training them. This fact helps to explain why businesses have little patience for people deficient in personal intelligences. One might argue that personal intelligences are important in companies that require face-to-face interaction and less so when people work at home or communicate via the Internet. It  may well be true that the particular mix of personal intelligences may change, but I am convinced that these intelligences will remain equally important, if not more so. To work effectively at a distance, one must be able to transmit and interpret subtle linguistic cues and, if face-to-face contacts occur, behave appropriately in light of the earlier, more "distant" contacts.

    Furthermore, in the future, more work may be temporary. When a job needs to be done, the producers will assemble a staff, with varying skills and intelligences, and ask them to accomplish the work as expeditiously and expertly as possible. (About 90 percent of the employees of the influential management company McKinsey and Co. are considered consultants rather than employees or partners.) If these staff are to be well assembled and work effectively with one another, individuals will need better personal intelligences than ever before.

    3 Interpreting the MIDAS profile as part of a psychological evaluation by Branton Shearer

    Attention School Psychologists!

    I am gathering information about how Multiple Intelligences (MI) and The Multiple Intelligences Developmental Assessment Scales (MIDAS) can be included in a school psychologist's assessments and consultations.  The MIDAS gathers considerable information useful for a rich understanding of a student's intellectual strengths and weaknesses. Detailed descriptions of strengths would seem to me to be particularly beneficial when planning therapeutic interventions. I believe that it is this kind of information that is often missing when we only use deficit oriented tests.

    If you are a school psychologist (or you know one) who would be willing to contribute your process or a case study to my research, I would provide you with several sample MIDAS profiles for your students.  Below I have sketched out my ideas about how a MIDAS profile can incorporated into the diagnostic process. I am interested in hearing your response to this work and how it might be improved. I am especially interested in gathering several case studies that illuminate how an MI understanding can be beneficial to students, teachers and parents.

    A MIDAS Profile can contribute useful information for a psychological report in several important ways.  You can use such a Profile to gather information for creating teaching and learning plans, cognitive remediation plans, behavioral interventions, and answering questions about curriculum / vocational planning.  More specifically, a MIDAS Profile can give you the following kinds of information:

    1. You can gain the student's perspective on his /her intellectual abilities and involvement.

    2.  You can obtain the parent's view of the child's profile of abilities and activities.

    3. You can ask teachers to provide information related to each intelligence in the form of work samples or a brief questionnaire.

    4. The Profile is a good source for understanding a student's specific areas of strength that are often overlooked or minimized. These specific activities can be used as part of a "strengths vs. weaknesses" remedial or compensatory learning plan.

    5. Curriculum and vocational planning can be enhanced by matching the students' MI strengths with course electives and vocational options.

    Interpretation Process

    1.  Referral Question(s):

    - Learning / Memory__
    - Behavioral__
    - Emotional__
    - Interpersonal / Peer__
    - Attitudinal__
    - Family Issues__
    - Mental Status__
    - Curriculum / Vocational Planning__
    2.  Background Information:

    3.  Data Collection:

    - Testing:
    - Teacher / Classroom:
    - Child Interview:
    - Parent:
    4. Profile of Intellectual Strengths / Limitations:

    5. Recommendations:

    - For Teachers:
    - For Students:
    - For Parents:
    - Activities / strategies to build weaknesses and solve problems:
    - Activities / strategies to develop and maximize strengths:
    6. Summary: Next steps and follow-up:

    Guiding Questions

    1. Does a MIDAS Profile agree with other sources of information….

    - Tests:
    - Grades:
    - Teacher reports:
    - Child reports:
    - Parent reports:
    2. What are specific areas of strength?

    3. What are specific areas of limitation?

    4. What is the relationship between MI limitations and the referral question- the problem?

    5. What strength activities / strategies can be pursued to remediate or compensate for problems/ limitations?

    6. What would be good activities / classes to develop MI strengths?

    Dr. Shearer continues to develop and refine the "My Young Child" version of The MIDAS for 4 to 8 year old children. If you would like to participate in this process and become a data collection site (pre-school through 2nd grade children) by having parents complete the questionniare on their child, please contact him at sbranton@kent.edu.

    4. In praise of black sheep by Johann Christoph Arnold: Rule-Breaking Children make the most self-reliant and Independent Adults

    Editorial comment:

    As editor, I receive various articles et al from those seeking to have their viewpoints published.  While I read and consider all of them, for various reasons many can not be published.  However, such was not the case with a recently received email.  As I began reading Johann Christoph Arnold's In Praise of Black Sheep, I 'saw' shadows of numerous students that I had worked with over the past 35 years.  Many such 'difficult' youngsters did indeed fit the 'black sheep' mold, so well described by Arnold.  As I read onward, I also thought of the Gardner MI model.  I wondered if an MI approach introduced into their earlier home and school environment would have improved their eventual outcome?  What do you think?

    In praise of black sheep: Rule-breaking children make the most self-reliant and Independent Adults

    There's a black sheep in every flock, and there are few of us who don't know one, or didn't know one as a child.  Every family, every class, has one: that brother or sister, boy or girl, who's always in trouble, who's prone to stretch limits or take things "too far," who's embarrassingly honest, who never fits in.  It's that child over whom every teacher puzzles longest and every parent loses the most sleep.

    But no matter how natural the phenomenon, being a misfit is never easy.  Because children are so vulnerable, and because they are dependent on the adults around them, they are far more sensitive to criticism than one might guess, and far more easily crushed.  And even if their natural forgetfulness and their amazing capacity to forgive relieves most children of much that might burden an adult, there are those whose self-confidence can be shriveled by an unjust accusation, a cutting remark, or a hasty miscalculation.

    Whenever we pass judgment on a child, we fail to see him as a whole person.  True, he may be nervous, shy, stubborn, moody, or violent; we may know his siblings or his background, or think we recognize family traits.  But to focus on any one aspect of a child, especially a negative one, is to put him in a box whose sides may not really be determined by reality, but only by our own expectations.

    Obviously, every child is different.  Some seem to get all the lucky breaks, while others have a rough time simply coping with life.  One child consistently brings home perfect scores, while the next is always at the bottom of the class.  Another is gifted and popular, while still another, no matter how hard he tries, is always in trouble and often gets forgotten.  As parents, we must refrain from showing favoritism, and from comparing our children with others.  Above all, we must refrain from pushing them to become something that their unique personal makeup may never allow them to be.

    Neither should we forget that raising a "good" child is a dubious goal in the first place, if only because the line between instilling integrity and breeding self-righteousness is so fine. Getting into trouble can be a vital part of building a child's character. As the Polish pediatrician Janusz Korczak points out: "The good child cries very little, he sleeps through the night, he is confident and good-natured. He is well-behaved, convenient, obedient, and good. Yet no consideration is given to the fact that he may grow up to be indolent and stagnant."

    It is often hard for parents to see the benefits of having raised a difficult child - even when the outcome is positive. But strange as it may sound, I believe that the more challenging the child, the more grateful the parent should be. If anything, parents of difficult children ought to be envied, because it is they, more than any others, who are forced to learn the most wonderful secret of true parenthood: the meaning of unconditional love. It is a secret that remains hidden from those whose love is never tested.

    At a conference in the sixties, at a time when "mal-adjustment" was the educational catchphrase of the day, Martin Luther King shocked teachers and parents by turning the supposed problem on its head. "Thank God for maladjusted children," a colleague remembers him saying.

    When we welcome the prospect of raising the problematic child with these things in mind, we will begin to see our frustrations as moments that can awaken our best qualities. And instead of envying the ease with which our neighbors seem to raise perfect offspring, we will remember that rule-breakers and children who show their horns often make more self-reliant and independent adults than those whose limits are never tried. By helping us to discover the limitations of "goodness" and the boredom of conformity, they can teach us the necessity of genuineness, the wisdom of humility, and finally the reality that nothing good is won without struggle.

    From ENDANGERED: Your Child in a Hostile World by Johann Christoph Arnold
    Free ebook & interactive website: http://www.plough.com/endangered
    Order the paperback 1-800-521-8011(US), 0800 018 0799(UK)
    Email the author at JCA@plough.com
    About the author

    An internationally known children's advocate, Johann Christoph Arnold has been a guest on over 100 talk shows, and a speaker at numerous colleges and universities. His books on sex and marriage, children's education, death and dying, forgiveness, and peace have sold over 200,000 copies in English and have been translated into eight foreign languages. Endangered tackles some of the most crucial and controversial issues he has addressed to date.

    In thirty years as a family counselor, Arnold has advised thousands of families and individuals, including single parents, prison inmates, and teenagers. As a father of eight and grandfather of twenty-four, he draws on a wealth of personal experience, bringing an intense passion for children to his writing.

    5 Technological means, human ends by Howard Gardner

    We are, once again, privileged to bring you another excerpt from Howard Gardner's second 1999 book Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century.  Here is his commentary.

    I have restricted myself until now almost entirely to the simplest forms of technology -- books, pencils, papers, a few art supplies, a simple biological laboratory.  This is appropriate; fundamental discussions of educational goals and means should not depend on the latest technological advances.  But the approach promises to be enhanced significantly by technology.  It is not easy for teachers to provide individualized curricula and pedagogy for a class of thirty elementary school students, let alone several high school classes totaling more than a hundred students.  And it is challenging to ask students to provide a variety of performances and then give them meaningful feedback.

    Happily, we have in our grasp today technology that should allow a quantum leap in the delivery of individualized services for both students and teachers.  It is already possible to create software that addresses the different intelligences, provides a range of entry points, allows students to exhibit their own understandings in diverse symbol systems (linguistic, numerical, musical, graphic, and more), and begins to allow teachers to examine student work flexibly and rapidly.  Student work can even be examined from a distance, thanks to electronic mail, Web sites, video conferencing, and the like.  The development of "intelligent systems" that will be able to evaluate student work and provide relevant feedback is no longer simply a chapter from science fiction.  Indeed, such systems should be able to vary both exercises and pedagogical feedback based on the success or failure of earlier interventions.  The earlier arguments against the feasibility of individualized instruction are no longer tenable.  Future reluctance will have to be justified on other grounds.  My strong hunch is that such resistance is not likely to persuade students and parents who are not experiencing success "in the usual way" and who might benefit from alternative forms of delivery, or scholars who have arrived at new ways of conceptualizing materials, or teachers dedicated to a variety of pedagogies and assessments.

    Educators have always tinkered with promising technologies. Much of the history of education chronicles the varying fates of paper, books, lecture halls, filmstrips, television, computers, and other human artifacts.  Current technologies seem tailor-made to help bring into reality the kind of MI approach I have endorsed here.  Still, there are no guarantees.  Many technologies have faded, and many others have been used superficially and unproductively.  And we cannot forget that some of the horrible events of human history---such as the Holocaust---featured a perversion of the existing technologies.  That is why any consideration of education cannot remain merely instrumental: If we get more computers, what do we want them for? More broadly, what do we want education for?  I have taken here a strong position: Education must ultimately justify itself in terms of enhancing human understanding.  But that understanding itself is up for grabs. After all, one can use knowledge of physics to build bridges or bombs; one can use knowledge of human beings to free or to enslave them.

    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.  Part of that answer lies in biology---the roots and constraints of our species---and part of it lies in our history---what people have done and are capable of doing.  Many topics are important, but I personally believe that evolution and the Holocaust are especially important.  They bear on the possibilities of our species, for both good and evil.  A student needs to know about these topics not primarily because they may appear on an examination but rather because they help us to chart human possibilities.  Ultimately, we must synthesize our understandings for ourselves.  The performances of understanding that truly matter are the ones we carry out as human beings in an imperfect world which we can affect for good or for ill.

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