BODILY KINESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE

Babe Ruth played third base on his team until he was fifteen years old. During one fateful game he repeatedly criticized the pitcher.

Irritated with the young upstart, the coach, Brother Mathias, called out, “Ruth, if you know so much about it, you pitch!”

This took the boy by surprise. Embarrassed because he had never pitched before and didn’t want to make a fool of himself, he refused.

However, Coach Mathias, wanting to teach Babe Ruth a lesson, insisted.

Having no choice the boy stepped to the pitcher’s mound to strike out one batter after another.

Years later Babe Ruth recalled, “The moment I took the pitcher’s mound I knew I was supposed to be a pitcher.” He recalled that it was “natural” for him to strike people out.

According to Howard Gardner in his book Multiple Intelligences Babe Ruth had “Bodily Kinesthetic Intelligence".

As with the musical intelligence exhibited by Menuhin, Babe Ruth’s intelligence arose from a part of the brain that apparently was switched on from birth to facilitate the amazing talent of this child prodigy.

Some readers may be asking what musical and bodily kinesthetic intelligences have to do with the academics children need to learn in school.

Howard Gardner goes beyond pointing out that these special preferences and abilities that people are born with are actual intelligences. In the experience of teachers who are given the freedom to sensitively facilitate the learning of individual children, these favored intelligences are segues into the three R’s. Almost always children are more inclined to read and write about topics related to this preferred internal intelligence. In other words, these intelligences are always connected to heightened interest.

In his book Inevitable Grace, Piero Ferrucci, discusses the awakening of the famous dancer, Isadora Duncan. She was drawn to beauty of any kind, and wished to express similar harmony through movement. The inspiration for the dance for which she became famous arose from gazing in rapt adoration at the Parthenon. To contemplate the sacred proportions of this ancient building was not enough for her. She wished to express such harmony of line and form through dance.

For days, her body remained frozen, unable to dance. In fact, she resolved she would never dance again, until she could express such unparalleled beauty. Finally, when she realized that the columns were not simply straight supports, but represented in concert an undulating, spiraling movement, the inspiration came. Her dance became a form of prayer.

My prime concern is the current and escalating trend to foster fear and anxiety in order to to promote cold homogeneity and regimentation as synonymous with education. It is cultural suicide to assume that the inspiration can be allowed to lead only after a stodgy left-brain route through suppressed childhood. True a few swans will make it through to express innate talents, regardless being under the control of duck consciousness. But how many will bury these and substitute mindless entertainment, addiction to the acquisition of things, and the comfort of a dull, routine existence for transcending potentials lost in the social press for ordinariness.

Genius does not follow the plodding steps of  factual knowledge alone. When Inspiration takes the lead, raises the bar of purposeful endeavor, and employs understanding and talent for its own purposes, then pursues the awakened Genius.

MUSICAL INTELLIGENCE

You’ve probably noticed that among the people you know, you are one of a kind. Far from clones of yourself, your friends and relatives possess greatly varying skills, personalities, interests, preferences, etc. 

Howard Gardner, the Harvard professor who is father of the theory of multiple intelligences (author of the book Multiple Intelligences) asserts that special talents and interests are indicators of a biological imperative that drives the psyche of individuals. Furthermore these biological imperatives are gateways for optimal learning for individual children.  Gardner has concluded that these are distinct intelligences, which are likely to be entry points for the expression of genius.

Beyond this, could it be that a little bit of protégée, that lacked sufficient encouragement as a child, shadows your daily life?

One of those intelligences proposed by Gardner is musical intelligence.

Yehudi Menuhin was fortunate in that his parents recognized their son’s powerful reaction to music from the time he was a tiny child. And they had the foresight to take action on his behalf. When Yehudi Menuhin was three years old, his parents smuggled him into the San Francisco Orchestra concerts. So entranced was Yehudi by the sound of Louis Persinger’s violin that he begged his parents to give him a violin for his birthday. Louis Persinger was so impressed by the youngster, that he agreed to comply with Yehudi’s demand that he be his teacher.

Who would have thought that as an adult this musical acumen would even be considered essential for winning a war as evidenced by the following cable received during WWII:

We request that you definitely cancel all arrangements for Menuhin concerts up to and including 13 October. His presence in Europe with fighting troops at this critical juncture of the war is essential in its effect upon their morale and most important. - General Eisenhower cables from Supreme Headquarters.

I have never heard of anyone who didn’t enjoy time spent following this biological imperative in his or her work and play. In the words of Yehudi Menuhin, “Anything that one really wants to do and one loves doing, one must do every day. It should be as easy to the artist and as natural as flying is to a bird. And you can't imagine a bird saying, ‘Well, I’m tired today. I’m not going to fly.’"

There’s much more to fostering adult competence than the verbal/linquistic and mathematical intelligences to which most of schooling has narrowed its focus. Even though we have a one-size-fits-all approach, emphasizing verbal/linguistic and mathematical skills, the human reality points to the need for a plurality of educational approaches, and allowance for multiple roads to success. Surprises abound among renowned geniuses.

Luciano Pavarotti the Italian operatic tenor, who also expanded to popular music, became one of the most successful tenors of all time. During Pavarotti’s brilliant career, he starred in well known operas such as Aida, Boheme, Tosca, and Madame Butterfly. Indeed many consider him to be one of the finest tenors of the 20^th century.

Pavarotti achieved this brilliant career in music despite one skill, the lack of which, his music teachers very likely considered prohibitive of success: he never did master reading musical notes.

True, the examples in this series on Multiple intelligences include child protégées. We mostly tend to think of such people as unusual, rare human beings. Yet how many of the behaviors of these labeled and/or drugged, or simply bored children of today resemble, in their attitudes and behaviors, those of world renowned geniuses when they were children? Almost without fail either parents of an influential relative had the insight and foresight to prioritize the fostering of that genius that became world famous.

Perhaps a suppressed or ignored potential protégée shadows you or someone you know. The more we pay attention to the life stories of geniuses who become household names, the more we discover among such representatives of surpassing talent that their path to success diverged from the system, or at least proceeded outside the closely guarded perimeters of its gatekeepers.

I’m not suggesting we eliminate academia. Just that we widen its corridors – considerably. 

THE TRUE COMMON CORE: Part 6 of 6

The following tale, The Animals That Went to School, is adapted from the original written by George Reavis in 1940. With this version, which extends the setting and ending, I have added my own twist.

Once upon a time a manicured park was cordoned off from a wild life refuge. Over time this caused subtle changes to the attitudes of the animals living in Central Park. A group of animal leaders in this mowed, trimmed, and edged park decided to start a school to produce a well-tamed park crew. The goal of the School Designers was to instill basic skills in park maintenance to be held in common by all the animal offspring and to effectively confine them to the park's parameters. There would be no more escaping of young animals into the neighboring wild life refuge.

The School Designers adopted a curriculum of running, climbing, swimming and flying.  The regime required all of the animals to take classes in all of the subjects in equal measure. That would guarantee that all had exactly the same education.

The duck was excellent at swimming.  In fact, he was better than his instructor.  However, he made only passing marks in flying and was very poor at running.  Since he was so slow in running, he had to do remedial running after school.  This caused his webbed feet to become sore and badly worn, meaning that he dropped to an average mark in swimming.  Fortunately, “average” was acceptable, therefore nobody worried about it – except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of the class in running, but developed a nervous twitch in his leg muscles because he had so much make-up work to do in swimming.

The flying squirrel was excellent in climbing, but he encountered constant frustration in flying class because his teacher insisted that he learn to fly from the ground up instead of from the treetop down.  The squirrel became a poor climber and developed cramps from overexertion while trying to fly, so he ended up with a C in climbing and a D in flying.

The eagle was a real problem student and was severely disciplined for being a non-conformist.  In climbing class, he repeatedly beat all of the others to the top, only to briefly soar out of control!

Occasionally the duck, rabbit, squirrel or eagle glimpsed the neighboring natural habitat, the Wildlife Refuge, and experienced a deep yearning.

The wary leaders, who had become invested in the Animal School, provided motivational carrots and sticks, but when this didn’t work sufficiently they invented labels, such as ATC (Awkward Tree Climber), IAF (Inadequate Attention to Flying). After School Tutoring proliferated as anxious parents enrolled the children. The medical profession duly supplied drugs to suppress the children’s urge to do anything other than attend their lessons. A steady parade of labels, meds, and test scores was sufficient to enlist the parents’ concerned support to the keep the animals’ focus where it needed to be.

One day, despite all this pressure, something profound stirred in the heart of the duck, the rabbit and the squirrel as each witnessed the eagle simply fly away, never to return …

THE TRUE COMMON CORE - Part 5 of 6

The first decade of the 21^st century has brought with it an explosion of science that casts new light on the dimensions of our humanness that dance out of range of our eyesight.

We humans can see only narrow band of the light spectrum between infra red and ultra violet. And so it is with our cameras. At least most of our cameras.  However, a few years back the Russian Scientist Konstantin Korotkov invented a camera that captures, the unseen, at least to our eyes, interactions between living beings. The GMV camera captures the fields of plants, animals and people, the reaching out, co-mingling, and even repelling of individual energy fields.

At the same time in America, the Institute of HeartMath proved that our heart radiates and energy field extending in the shape of a torus around the body. We can’t see it, but it’s there affecting and being affected by every one that it contacts.

During the same decade the Japanese scientist Masuro Emoto discovered that thoughts and intentions affect molecules of water—such as the molecules of water that comprise over 70% our body. While dark, negative emotions create muddy blobs, happy, peaceful beautiful thoughts, like love and gratitude form beautiful crystals.

What if we were able to see the energy fields of our children in school and in nature? What if we could see them shrink into a dismal state of self-protection when the child feels bored? Not understood? Under pressure? What if we could see the water crystals in the child’s blood turn to muddy blobs at these times?

On the other hand, imagine seeing the dance of energy when children play; when they engage in work of their own initiative; when they are enjoying nature; when they are in a loving environment. What if we had this ability to peer closer to the core of our humanity? To the Core of the Child? How would we design their days? Their Education? Their environment?

Epilogue to the Allegory:

 Potential enlightenment so threatened the power and pocketbooks of the corporate promoters of the Cave Dweller Curricula and accoutrements that they stepped up their campaign to laud the ‘core’ learning needs of cave-bound humanity. Many confused parents anxiously clung to the familiar slogans “Into the Light” and “For The Common Good”.  Accordingly they prevailed upon their children to submit to shadow-bound academics in the interest of bright futures. So conditioned were the cave dwellers by corporate/government-driven slogans that even the knowledge of the light blinded them.

Nonetheless, the rays of light proved so irresistible that increasingly the children of coming generations stepped through the cave portal to repopulate meadows and forests. The common reservoir of Living Connections stimulated brilliance through imagination, exploration, creativity and ingenuity, and love. Corporate cave interests were forced to seek new sources of revenue as, one by one, families, relocated in Ecological Edens, and child protégées enjoyed Enlightened Education and Elucidation.