What are the types of intelligence?
There are many ways to be smart, and there are multiple intelligences. Howard Gardner put forth this theory, and it seems to hold water, that people can be intelligent in many different ways. To be intelligent musically, for example, you still need to practice things, remember things, compare things, new skills to ones that you already know. That would be in a musical sense. A kinesthetic learner, or a kinesthetic intelligence would involve movement: dance movements, athletic movements. Still, we need to practice. We need to compare new information to old information. And in all the areas that people are smart. Verbal-linguistic ability, logical-mathematical ability, interpersonal intelligence. All of these are ways that we can become very bright by practicing, and by organizing the new information that we find. You know, I like to freak out my classes sometimes, I go in there and I go "You're going to learn this semester that everyone learns the same." And they go "Oh, that's like sacrilege!" And then I go "Everyone's got to practice things." It doesn't matter what your intelligence, if you're a visual learner, you're an auditory learner. We all learn the same process. We commit things to memory, we compare it to things we already know, we make analogies. Without that you can't be a great athlete, you can't be a great musician. And that's what Garnder was saying, but people misinterpret him all the time.
