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In the 15 years since Frames of Mind was published, those other volumes have never appeared. Nor, as Gardner acknowledges, have those discussions and tests been undertaken. He now says that as a scientist he preferred to move on to other matters within MI and outside it. Moreover, he says, it goes against the grain of his philosophy to develop tests to measure the intelligences, a prerequisite psychologists say would be necessary to determine the validity of the theory. Gardner also points out that the overall trends in neurology and cognitive psychology strongly support his view that intelligence comprises many abilities.
Gardner is right about that. Still, many neurologists and psychologists believe recent discoveries in brain science--the localization of particular traits, the proliferation and pruning of synapses--are far too poorly understood to guide educators. Meanwhile, students of cognition, even those who give Gardner much credit, cite research that contradicts him. "The different intelligences show correlations in many cases, and within intelligence, there is a lack of unity," said Robert Sternberg, a professor of psychology and education at Yale. In other words, some of Gardner's intelligences do not seem to be independent faculties, while other intelligences divide up into more than one faculty.
As science, then, there may be less to the theory of multiple intelligences than many educators seem to believe. That may not matter so much. Gardner and other researchers say it's not necessary for a theory to enjoy absolute scientific confirmation as long as it shows good results in the classroom. But does MI show such results?
Gardner has never laid down a detailed plan for applying his theory in schools, and the consultants and publishers who offer training in MI operate independently of him, so there is a wide range of actual practices. A few hundred schools, like Coyote Creek, use the theory in a thoroughgoing way; thousands more adopt pieces of it. The result is that the methods that go under the name of multiple intelligences are often ones Gardner would not approve of. He insists, for example, that it is a waste of time to simply "exercise the intelligence muscles."
Yet the most common use of MI is to attack a topic from seven directions to fit in all the intelligences. Take a typical project described in a book published by SkyLight. To teach children about the oceans, it is suggested that they write about cleaning a fish (tapping the linguistic intelligence), draw a sea creature (spatial), "role play" a sea creature (bodily-kinesthetic), use a Venn diagram to compare and contrast ships (logical), tap glasses with different amounts of water (musical), design a water vehicle in a group (interpersonal) and choose a favorite sea creature (intrapersonal). All these activities will take up a lot of time, and they will teach children very little about the ocean.
The key for Gardner is first to decide on the facts and procedures a teacher wants a student to understand, and then to figure out how best to present this information, given the student's strengths and weaknesses. Jean McKibben, a fifth-grade teacher at Coyote Creek, provided an example of such an approach when she described a project her students did about the European settlement of the Americas. Among other things, she wanted them to learn about the boats that were used.