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.