Behavior

Issue date:
March 13-15, 1998

6 other ways to judge IQ

Your IQ is more than just language and logic, say a growing group of teachers.

ORGET WHAT you know about IQ. That grade-school test to show "how smart you are" - most likely the Stanford-Binet - evolved from a century-old idea that intelligence is a single, unchanging, inborn capacity.

Traditional IQ tests, while still given to most schoolchildren, are increasingly challenged by a growing movement called Multiple Intelligences, or sometimes just MI.

The MI leader is Howard Gardner of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His treatise: Traditional IQ tests measure only logic and language, yet the brain has other equally important types of intelligence. Originally, he listed seven types. Recently, he added an eighth.

"All humans have these intelligences, but we differ in the strengths and combinations of intelligences," Gardner says. "All can be enhanced through training and practice."

From Florida to Seattle, Gardner's associate Mindy Kornhaber, director of Project SUMIT (Schools Using Multiple Intelligences Theory), is studying classrooms that encourage learning beyond written lessons and verbal reports.

Success is not easily measured, especially with traditional multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank tests. And Gardner warns against the developing of alternative IQ tests for children. Instead, he advises parents, go "to a rich environment, like a children's museum, and watch the child carefully as he/she plays, explores, tries things out, learns and returns to displays. You can learn a lot about your child's gifts or talents if you observe carefully."

Parents who tune in to their child's interests can provide toys, books, games and projects that build on a child's inherent gifts. As a result of accentuating differences like these, individuals are free to be intelligent in their own ways.

Emotional knowledge is being taught in a growing number of schools, says Daniel Goleman, author of the best seller Emotional Intelligence.

Learning self-confidence, for instance, helps children resist dangerous temptations. "As emotional IQ goes up, problems such as substance abuse and unwanted pregnancy go down," Goleman says. "Academic achievement scores also go up."

Parents are a child's main tutors in emotional intelligence, Goleman says. "Every time your child is upset is an opportunity for you as a parent to teach about why such feelings occur, why you don't have to act on them, how a child can learn to soothe him/herself, or how to resolve a conflict. Teachers can do the same."

Thalia Zepatos last wrote in USA WEEKEND about creative government.