taking an IQ test, and what kind of impact such test can have on her life, making a

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Entire book summarized in plain English.

Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences Howard Gardner

Chapter 1: The Idea of Multiple Intelligences

In this chapter, Gardner outlines his basic aims in writing this book, and how he came about formulating these theories. He begins with the scene of a young girl taking an IQ test, and what kind of impact such test can have on her life, making a case for the value western society has put on an hour’s worth of questions. He also paints an international contrast of different skills valued in different cultures, and how there is no real measure of some forms of expertise. He states that the “problem lies less in the technology of testing than in the ways in which we customarily think about the intellect and our ingrained views of intelligence. Only if we expand and reformulate our view of what counts as human intellect will be able to devise more appropriate ways of assessing it and more effective ways of educating it.” The purpose of the book, he states is to formulate a view of intelligence, which incorporates a wide range of abilities. In the following chapters a new theory of human intellectual competences that will outline the classical view of intelligence. In order to for us to understand this he will have us consider the traditional view, where it came form and how is became so “entrenched” in our society. He speaks of the centering on mental powers in the roots of our civilization, from the rise of the Greek city-state. He introduces us to two schools of thought in the study of intelligence, the “hedgehogs”, and the “foxes”. The hedgehogs view intelligence as one piece, and the foxes believe that intelligences are fragmented into several pieces. He states that this is still a continuing debate about “parceling intellect into parts”. “The time may be at hand for some clarification about the structure of the human intellectual competence” Gardener states, and the “confluence” of the large body of evidence from a variety of sources in this purpose of this book, to argue that there is evidence and existence of several “relatively autonomous” human intellectual competences, abbreviated in this book as “human intelligences”, his “frames of mind”. He states his belief in some intelligences, a set number not fixed, but intelligences that are “relatively independent of on another, and that they can be fashioned and combined in a multiplicity of adaptive ways by individuals and cultures”. Gardner describes his research methods, reviewing work from a large group of unrelated sources, listing a spectrum of different groups of people from normal adults children to idiot savants and brain-damaged individuals.The remaining paragraphs of this chapter go to state his assignments of this book.

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