An Intelligence that Civilizations Have Continually Suppressed
John L. Waters
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An Intelligence that Civilizations Have Continually
Suppressed
John L. Waters
May 10, 2001
Copyright 2001 by John L. Waters. All Rights
Reserved
-------------------------------------------------------
Submission 1
May 10, 2001
An Intelligence that Civilizations Have Continually
Suppressed
Howard Gardner (1983), a renowned writer,
lecturer, and professor at Harvard University, defined
the seven basic human intelligences:
(1)logical-mathematical, (2) linguistic, (3)
bodily-kinesthetic, (4) spatial-visual, (5) musical,
(6) interpersonal and (7) inter-personal (80). Since
then, however, in his books, lectures, and at his
website Dr. Gardner hasn't emphasized that
bodily-kinesthetic intelligence is preverbal and that
it is employed by animals. Furthermore, body movement
is used as an aid in tension release and as an aid in
problem solving. Our ancestors used body movement in
this way as well. For example, this is suggested by a
report given by Heinrich Kluever in his book "Behavior
Mechanisms in Monkeys" (304-5). This report describes
kinesthetic intelligence in a monkey that drew lines
on the floor with a nail and with a piece of chalk.
Consistent negative social conditioning
causes many school children to suppress the bodily
kinesthetic intelligence as defined by author Howard
Gardener. In defining what is best for developing
minds, educational philosophers and moralists haven't
taken this kinesthetic intelligence sufficiently into
account. However, certain unusually creative persons
have described their own use of kinesthetic
intelligence during periods of increased productivity.
For example, Albert Einstein has stated that he felt
in his muscles when he was following a line of
thinking which later proved especially significant.
This well-known example of heightened kinesthetic
sense suggests that helping young persons develop
kinesthetic sensitivity will help them become more
creative.
High kinesthetic intelligence moves the body
or parts of the body with energy, grace, and
precision. The professional expert on creativity and
author Joseph Schwartz presents a long passage from
the well-known physicist Dr. Enrico Fermi, explaining
how the scientist used spontaneous vocalization as a
guide in his research. Dr. Fermi talked freely to
himself and told himself to substitute paraffin for
lead in his experiment with slow neutrons. Dr. Fermi
failed to follow the carefully prepared plan of this
experiment. The man engaged in free talking and
changed his experimental procedure. Free talking,
like free writing, is a spontaneous extemporaneous
kinesthetic activity. This experiment using paraffin
instead of lead resulted in a scientific breakthrough
(181).
How is the above example important? How
would a more traditional approach have hindered Dr.
Fermi? A more traditional approach would have been
for the scientist to stick to his original
experimental plan. Fermi wouldn't have used his brain
in this spontaneous way. In that case, Fermi's lack
of spontaneous body movement would have prevented him
from deviating from the experimental plan and then, as
a consequence, he never would have made the scientific
breakthrough.
Furthermore, as well as in scientific
research, kinesthetic intelligence is used by writers,
musicians, artists, and other creative people who
often allow their hands and minds to move without any
consciously pre-planned outline or format. Barbara
Brown MD describes a two-hour episode in which she had
no conscious recognition of words or thoughts as she
typed a long technical paper which was later published
in a professional medical journal (208). Barbara
Brown cited this episode of literary spontaneity as an
example of "supermind."
How did this method allow for a fuller
discovery and/or expression? Before Barbara Brown
used this free writing she was unable even to begin
writing her paper. For several weeks she tried to
begin writing her paper, but couldn't get started.
She felt a tension and pressure building inside. Then
one afternoon she sat at her typewriter and let her
body move without her own conscious control. By
letting this process work, she was able to begin her
task and follow through with it.
During moments of literary spontaneity,
creative writers often use free writing to obtain
ideas and combine old ideas in new ways. Moreover,
graphic artists make preliminary sketches and musical
composers play impromptu, extemporaneous pieces.
These are examples of letting body movement play the
leading role in arriving at new ideas and new works.
These works aren't memorized or planned in advance.
The body movement precedes the thought or is
simultaneous with the thought.
Such free and spontaneous body movement,
however, is often discouraged even by teachers in the
primary grades. For example, in first grade, the
"superior" student is the one who easily and quickly
copies the long sequences of movements required to
produce neat lettering, numerals, correctly spelled
words, dance steps, movements in sports games and
social manners and speech sounds. All these
traditional lessons teach a child to first pay
attention to a standard pattern or template format and
then move the body in conformity to the standard
pattern. But using the reverse method, a more
kinesthetically creative person lets his or her body
lead. The kinesthetic intelligence then moves
independently without following any preconceived plan
or any form presented in class. The conscious mind is
bypassed. Free body movement produces new
combinations which become novel works in art, in
music, in writing, or in other media.
Letting free body movement suggest ideas to
the mind, a teacher might say, is putting the cart
before the horse. However, putting the cart before
the horse is literally the way in which Volkswagen
automobiles were designed. In Volkswagen cars and
vans, the motor's placed at the back of the vehicle.
In other designs the motor is up at the front of the
vehicle. In the Volkswagen design we witness an
example of German innovation. Other innovators have
done things in the wrong order, or in a different
order. By letting children try using the free body
movement in learning and expression, educators will
help children relieve tension and and give more
opportunity to the ones who learn better by creating
rather than just by repeating what has been presented.
Just as reversing the position of the engine in a
motor vehicle was innovative, this reversal in a
child's order of functioning is innovative.
The conventional method of learning is not
by creating. The conventional method of learning is
to start with a plan or blueprint. Meticulous work
then follows the plan diligently. In school the good
student is expected to plan his or her work ahead of
time and stick to the plan. For example, the good
little artist sets up a model before starting to draw
or paint. The good little first grader looks
carefully at every line and angle of the capital
letter "A" before starting to laboriously copy it.
However, the child who follows the alternative
cognitive method makes no conscious plan, or else it
breaks the plan without remorse or guilt. For
example, the child draws freely with a crayon and has
no thought about what he or she is trying to make a
picture of. Or the child may talk freely and
unselfconsciously without forethought. In a similar
manner, Enrico Fermi used spontaneous talking to
change his mind during his experiment on slow
neutrons.
Enrico Fermi was sometimes innovative on the
spur of the moment by letting his body movement lead
his mentation. This man employed a method of
non-rational, kinesthetic learning and expression.
Because of his unusual cognitive style, many of his
co-workers considered Fermi to be a genius. He did
things other scientists couldn't even dream of doing.
The conservative educator might argue that a
genius is free to be innovative, but very few children
are geniuses. The conservative then might argue that
a mere school child needs to just buckle down and
focus on memorizing all the standard forms. This
logic is wrong because in humans and in animals as
well, free movement is an aid to problem solving as
well as in overcoming frustration and boredom. The
scientist Heinrich Kluever observed spontaneous
drawing movements in a Cebus monkey female whom he
considered to be unusually intelligent (pages 304,
305). These drawing movements indicated that this
monkey's brain activity was different from the brain
activity in a monkey that was just sitting still.
Similarly, children trying to learn something
difficult might be helped by letting them draw with a
crayon. Furthermore, the argument that young people
need to just sit still and copy isn't strong because
the youngest brains learn fastest. If there's a
complementary way to cogitate, then the younger
children will learn it fastest and best. Brain
studies support the idea that younger brains learn
faster. Dr. Bruce A. Epstein, M.D., emphasizes the
very great importance of early brain development.
Furthermore, we recall the familiar saying, "Teach a
child to be a Catholic by the age of seven and the
person will be a Catholic for life." This works
because what is learned first is retained best by the
brain. And so, if it is important for a person to
learn how to be more creative, it is important for
parents and educators to teach and demonstrate this
method to the little ones. This deeper learning is
profoundly integrated into all they do later, as it
was in Enrico Fermi.
Rather than ridicule and otherwise abuse the
children who have very kinesthetic brains and who
doodle or fidget, it's better to give these brainy
children different tools and equipment to manipulate
in class. Rather than stifle and constrain unusually
brainy children and stop them from moving, it's better
to let their bodies express and develop more creative
intelligence through movement. Some of the ideas
generated by this spontaneous creativity will appear
in the children's art, music, writing, dancing, or
other productions.
Furthermore, if kinesthetic children don't
learn to be more creative by moving their bodies
freely, or by some other way, they will remain less
creative than they might have learned to be and even
get into the habit of being non-creative. This is
unfortunate because there is a creative talent in
these children that is continually suppressed.
Furthermore, in a repressive home or school
atmosphere, the kinesthetic child may become
destructive, apathetic, or bored. Therefore it's wise
to teach both the traditional way of learning by
following a form or a model and the more creative,
kinesthetic "inside-out" method of learning and
thinking without following any preconceived form or
model.
In school children, the kinesthetic
intelligence is often presided over or even squelched
by the linguistic-verbal intelligence. As children we
were taught to think before we speak or act.
Furthermore as young school children, we were all
expected to sit still for hours each day; fidgeting,
wiggling, doodling, and other so-called "nervous
mannerisms" weren't tolerated. From these examples,
we see how spontaneous body movement has long been
rejected as an aid in deep learning, as a focus of
serious intellectual study, and as a source of new
idea generation. Nervous, fidgety, and seemingly
inattentive children are abused by their peers and by
their teachers. In some cases today, these children
are even given medications.
Moreover, preschool children are often
punished when they handle objects or even just put
their hands on things and feel them. These
punishments discourage a child from touching, feeling,
and manipulating objects. A visually impaired child
will need to use his or her hands even more to get
information from the world. Often this child's
efforts to learn will be considered a form of
disobedience. The visually impaired child's
spontaneous body movement will continue to express his
or her need to make meaningful contact with the
natural world and with the world of cultured persons.
But how well do cultured persons get the message
communicated from non-verbal bodies?
Individuals from a different culture, and
less articulate persons in a given culture have been
abused for thousands of years, as the civilization has
absorbed aboriginal peoples and forced both young and
old persons to follow the strict rules of conventional
symbol manipulation, as in religious symbolism, in
mathematics, in writing, in philosophy, and (today) in
orthodox psychology and medicine. For many
generations the nonverbal prehistoric body
intelligence has been consistently suppressed.
However, certain unusually creative individuals have
felt this intelligence guiding them during times of
intense personal insight and creativity. Einstein was
such a person:
"Yet if all thinking were verbal thinking Einstein
would not qualify as a thinker...And we heard one
testimony after another from great scientists, which
show that in order to create they had to regress at
times from the word to the picture-strip, from verbal
symbolism to visual symbolism--some, like Einstein,
even to the kinesthetic sensation of muscle-motions"
(Koestler 173).
In his book "Wisdom of the Body" Walter
Cannon illustrates ways by which homeostasis keeps the
body physiology in balance (27-304). For example, if
a six-year old boy is accustomed to running around
outside mostly naked, and a conventional school forces
this child to cover up his body and sit still for
hours each day, the boy's internal homeostatic
mechanisms will be disrupted. His chronic
susceptibility to illnesses may result from this
chronic stress. The young man's chronic
susceptibility to illness won't be easily explained,
because parents and educators aren't familiar with
Cannon's idea, and the need for free body movement in
young children.
Such stress-induced chronic illness may make
it impossible for a suppressed child to discover and
demonstrate his or her true innate ability. Other
children will be affected in this way to a greater or
lesser extent, according to the relative magnitudes of
their different inherited intelligences, and to the
extent that as preschoolers they were permitted to
move without constraint and sense the integration of
the kinesthetic intelligence with all the other
intelligences defined by Howard Gardner.
Young children at home and at school should
be encouraged to observe models and copy from models
as well as observe nature and copy many natural forms.
In addition, young children should be encouraged to
originate artistic, musical, and literary forms by
their own free body movement and other means of
imaginative play. In this way both younger and older
students will use both of these basic learning methods
to retain more information and also be more creative.
This more balanced system of education is
especially beneficial for those young persons who are
inclined to feel blocked because they can't learn by
just following the set form or pattern. Moreover,
these children, who often are unusually bright, tend
to be bored and even sickened by school because they
simply have more creative talent. In today's
"American Motors" type of school many of these
"Volkswagen" type persons don't function well. They
tend to become bored, alienated, confused and
destructive at least in their thinking. Teasing,
scolding, physical restraints, medications, and other
abuses aren't the most creative answer to this
problem.
References
Brown, Barbara. "Supermind the Ultimate Energy."
Toronto: Bantam Books, 1980.
Cannon, Walter B. "The Wisdom of the Body."
New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1963.
Epstein, Bruce A., M. D. "The Importance of Early
Brain
Development"N.d.
Date accessed 12 Apr., 2001.
Gardner, Howard "Frames of Mind: The Theory of
Multiple Intelligences." New York: Basic Books, 1983.
Gardner, Howard "Howard Gardner's Multiple
Intelligence
Theory"
N.d. Date accessed 13 Apr., 2001.
Kluever, Heinrich. "Behavior Mechanisms In Monkeys."
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933.
Koestler, Arthur. "The Act Of Creation"
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1964.
Schwartz, Joseph. "The Creative Moment."
New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1992.
John L. Waters
johnlwaters@yahoo.com
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