A view that I share because I feel the organisation is based on a false premise. of what being intelligent is. I prefer to use the ideas first developed in 1983 by Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University. His theory of multiple intelligences suggests that traditional notions of intelligence, based on I.Q. testing, is far too limited. Instead, Dr. Gardner proposes eight different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults.These are
Groups like Mensa, and Education in general, see intelligence as word and number/reasoning smart. Hence, they tend to value these individual attributes or skills. I worked in Further Education and used these ideas linked to NLP methods. Part of this was helping the students assess their own learning style. Many of them were amazed to discover that they were not 'thick' but learned best by doing or by self-reflection.
Now what does this mean for Quakers? How do our practices meet the needs of these diverse ways of engaging with the world? Do we in practice value and attract a high percentage of individuals who have
Linguistic intelligence ("word smart" +and so favour spoken ministry based on deep reflection and repel many who have
Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")
Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")+who would prefer dancing in the woods under the full moon?
Musical intelligence ("music smart")+
Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")
Is this a bad thing or what the many paths to the divine really mean? In Friends we may have 57 variety of opinion but from afar are we more similar in the path we tread then we think?
3 comments:
John, this post reminds me of a workshop I participated in, during which we looked at the types of spirituality that we might embody in our individual faith, and considering the balance of those four types within ourselves.
The workshop was based heavily on a book by Corinne Ware, who describes four spiritual types:
(1)"Head," intellectual and fed by theological study and thought-provoking sermons;
(2)"Heart," emotional and nurtured through witnessing, music, and spontaneous spiritual expression;
(3)"Mystic," contemplative and supported by meditative practices and quiet retreats;
(4)"Kingdom," visionary and strengthened by social action programs that promote idealistic causes.
I enjoy having different models, paradigms, and concepts to work with, because they allow me to get out of my own spiritual tunnel vision and help me deconstruct the "my way or the highway" judgements I have of others.
Blessings,
Liz Opp, The Good Raised Up
Thanks Liz, that looks really interesting. Any like you like to know how to get outside of my comfort zone
My reaction to the Gardner division is that it seems to leave out the spiritual element. It seems incomplete. And of course, any such division is arbitrary.
The Ware division I find more interesting. I agree that hunkering down in one type is usually unhealthy. Personally, I don't fit neatly into one. I strongly identify with 2, 3 and 4, and 1 is certainly not absent.
Unprogrammed Quakers seem to tend to concentrate on 3 and 4. But they seem to have a lot of "head" type people, even though their style doesn't seem to really accommodate that, which is interesting. And white Quakers generally seem very suspicious of heart spirituality, dating from somewhere around the turn of the 17th/18th centuries, I think.
I have a sense that very early Quakers were much more balanced among these four than most groups of Quakers since. I think there are outposts of restoring that balance, which represent hope for Quakerism.
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