The brilliant don’t always “show their work.”

Gardner’s approach might solve some of the problems with measuring whatever-the-hell-”intelligence”-is, but it creates others. It also, I think, starts begging the question of why we’re even bothering to measure “intelligence” beyond school age; that is to say, it might be useful to know what a schoolchild’s aptitudes are (that was Binet’s whole object to start with, within the context of turn-of-the-20th-Century models and approaches to education), and approach the child’s education by playing to the child’s strengths and buttressing the child’s weaknesses. It’s less clear that there’s any use in knowing that an adult is better at “Kinesthetic Intelligence” than at “Intrapersonal Intelligence.” Granted, it might be something a vocational counselor fixates on–except the fact an adult has an aptitude for physical motion doesn’t mean he or she didn’t spend a lifetime at a desk, let’s say; assuming for the sake of an argument that this adult has somehow naturally capped-out at a mediocre level because he or she has heavily invested themselves in something they have no natural gifts for, it doesn’t follow that they are somehow more employable or even that they would be happier or even better, for that matter, doing something that better suits their natural talents. Or, even if they would be any or all of those things, that pursuing those aptitudes would be practical (one might be happier and even ultimately more successful as a painter than an accountant, but that fact doesn’t pay the mortgage nor clothe the children in the meantime).

Oh, and then there’s this unfortunate point in the Wikipedia article on Gardner’s hypothesis: “A major criticism of this theory is that it has never been tested, or subjected to peer review, by Gardner or anyone else, and indeed that it is unfalsifiable.” That, of course, isn’t a “major” criticism, but a fatal one.

I’d have to agree with Janiece’s point. I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it. That doesn’t mean I don’t find IQ useful as a diagnostic when something is clearly wrong; in my line of work, being able to say that a thirteen-year-old (or a twenty-year-old!) is functioning at the level of a nine-year-old may be extraordinarily useful, even if one can’t put their finger on what that means in a kind of quantitative sense. But, you know, this leads to an interesting (sort of) thought, which is that in this context “intelligence test” becomes a misnomer that may be part of the confusion; what is being measured is really a functioning or maybe coping quotient, as opposed to the connotation we usually get from the word “intelligence.” Just a thought.