Upgrading the standard IQ test

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In 1983, famed Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner published his seminal book, “Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences,” which laid out seven primary intelligences –– linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, intra-personal and interpersonal.

The text, adopted as a bible by a generation of schoolteachers and administrators, was a kick in the gut to our education system. In it, Gardner questioned our fundamental theories about what constituted intelligence and laid bare the failings of our “testing society,” which had for decades defined intelligence through a single number, the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Quotient.

The Stanford-Binet IQ test was developed in the early 1900s
to identify learning deficits in young children. The exam measures verbal, abstract, visual and quantitative reasoning, as well as short-term memory. If you score between 80 and 109 on the test, you are of normal, or average, intelligence. If you fall below that number, you may need special services in school. If you score between 160 and 180, you’re Einstein. Over the decades, IQ became a shorthand notation to sum up the strength of a testee’s cerebral cortex.

Then along came Gardner’s “Frames of Mind,” published by Basic Books. The theory of multiple intelligences that he argued so forcefully for in the text goes like this: No single number can define the complexities and vagaries of the human mind. One’s ability to think, to synthesize information, requires a broader definition, one that encompasses a vast array of abilities and accounts, to the greatest degree possible, for the brain’s fluidity, its ability to evolve (or devolve) over time.

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