A primary goal of The New School is to teach students to use their minds well. To do this, we must find ways to reach all students in our classes, not just the ones who learn in the traditional ways. The linguistic and mathematical/logical intelligences, addressed in traditional classrooms, are just two of the seven intelligences originally described by Harvard University professor Howard Gardner in his book, Frames of Mind. The seven intelligences Gardner originally identified (there are now eight) are:
Gardner has added the naturalist intelligence, and he has been investigating the concept of an existential/spiritual intelligence as well.
MI theory has guided much of classroom instruction at The New School over the past twenty-five years. The philosophy behind MI theory, simply put, is that people are intelligent in different ways, and they learn best if they are given the opportunity to use their strongest array of intelligences. This means teaching content to, through, and about several different intelligences (not just linguistic and mathematical).
Teachers conduct classes and develop assignments that appeal to as many of the intelligences as practical and appropriate for their courses. Consider this example of a history course: In addition to reading the material (linguistic), the students may be asked to keep a diary (intrapersonal), act out a battle scene (bodily-kinesthetic) with a group of classmates (interpersonal), while listening to music (musical) and creating artwork (spatial intelligence) in the style of the period. Or, consider this bioethics course: it is designed to use not only the mathematical/logical and linguistic intelligences (reading, writing, and calculating), but the naturalist (identifying natural cycles and sequences) and the existential/spiritual intelligences (reflecting on the meaning of life), too.