Expert Testimony

By Debra Viadero

Howard Gardner has had enough of watching children crawl around on the classroom floor in the name of his theory of multiple intelligences. It would suit him just fine to never again hear of students reciting the state capitals in song. And he cringes when he meets a teacher who points to a student and says, "That's Sally. She's spatial, but she's not linguistic," as if those were immutable intellectual qualities.

"Sometimes," Gardner says, "I say to my staff sort of sotto voce, 'My God, what have I wrought?"'

That is why the Harvard psychologist is breaking a long, self-imposed silence to set the record straight on how his popular theory plays out in real-life classrooms. In an essay scheduled to come out this month in the journal Phi Delta Kappan , Gardner sets out to dispel seven myths that have grown up around his seven intelligences in hopes of clarifying his ideas for the educators who have...