Armstrong Thomas - Youre smarter than you think : a kids guide to multiple intelligences

Do you think youre smart? What does it mean to be smart anyway? Many people believe being smart is all about getting good grades and high test scores in school. Lots of people think being smart means you can do things like:

• read really well
• solve math problems quickly
• recite a bunch of facts
• understand everything about computers

So, what do you think being smart means?

Heres something that may surprise you: Being smart isnt only about getting good grades, scoring well on tests, and memorizing stuff. In fact, there are lots of other ways to show your smartsthrough art, music, athletics, nature, emotions, and getting along with others (to name a few). In this book, youll discover that there are many ways to be smart.

For about the past 100 years, experts have often used IQ tests to figure out how smart people are. IQ stands for intelligence quotient , and it is a measure of how someone scores on the test. The test has you solve math problems, define words, create designs, repeat numbers from memory, and do other tasks. Maybe youve taken an IQ test.

Many people think that IQ tests are the best way to measure how smart someone is. IQ tests arent perfect though, and theres a lot they cant tell you. They cant predict what youll do when you grow up or what you can achieve in your life. And the test questions may reflect the biases, or opinions, of the people who created them. Besides, no test can test for everything. The questions dont always give you the best chance to show off your different kinds of smarts. IQ tests generally focus most of their attention on being good with words or numbers, and they neglect other important things like music, art, nature, and social ability.

Recently, people have challenged the idea that IQ is the best measure of intelligence. One of those people is a psychologist and a professor of education from Harvard University named Dr. Howard Gardner. Thanks in part to his work, experts now have a whole new idea of what it means to be smart.

Since IQ tests are limited and dont test for the wide range of abilities that people often show and use, Dr. Gardner suggests they arent a true measure of how smart someone really is.

Dr. Gardner decided there isnt just one way to be smart but rather many different ways . He used his research with kids and adults to discover more about how people learn. Dr. Gardner found out that people seemed to learn and show their smarts in a lot of ways. He also noticed that different parts of the brain seemed to be tied to the different ways of being smart. He came up with an idea, or theory, to explain the wide range of abilities he was seeing. He called his idea the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (or MI theory for short).

If you think about it, Dr. Gardners idea about different kinds of intelligence makes sense. There are plenty of examples of people who havent scored well on IQ tests or who havent even been tested on what theyre good at doing, but who are clearly very smart in many other ways. These might include people who paint, climb mountains, make business deals, explore nature, or invent machines. Certainly, you can score well on an IQ test and still do those things, but your test results wont necessarily show everything that youre good at.

MI theory says there are eight (and maybe nine) different kinds of intelligenceeight or nine ways to be smart! (There may even be more, but they havent been identified yet.) Each of these different kinds of intelligence can be described by certain traits, activities, and interests.

When Dr. Gardner published books about his theory, he came up with names for the different kinds of intelligences. Here are the eight kinds of smart he talked about: (1) Linguistic Intelligence, (2) Musical Intelligence, (3) Logical-Mathematical Intelligence, (4) Spatial Intelligence, (5) Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence, (6) Interpersonal Intelligence, (7) Intrapersonal Intelligence, and (8) Naturalist Intelligence. There also may be a ninth intelligence called Existential Intelligence or Life Smart (well talk about it in the last chapter of this book, ).

Ive been studying Dr. Gardners work for over 25 years now. Over the years, Ive written many books for adults on multiple intelligences. But because Ive also spent many years teaching kids, I wanted to write a book that would help young people. I hope to explain MI theory in a way that makes it easy for you to understand, because I think its important for kids like you to make the most of all your smarts.