The word intelligence describes something that is real and that it varies from person to person is as universal and ancient as any understanding about the state of being human. Over the last thirty years the concept of intelligence has been a pariah in the world of ideas. Variation in intelligence became the subject of productive scientific debate in the last half of the nineteenth century, stimulated by Darwin’s theory of evolution which asserted the transmission of inherited intelligence as a key step in human evolution. Galton seized on this idea and set out to demonstrate its relevance in Britain. His efforts failed but others followed where Galton had led. Binet created what is purported to be the first ‘successful’ test of intelligence. Education in the West Indies did not escape these scientific influences and the concept intelligence did inform the organisation of schooling in the region with a view to produce distinctive pedagogic identities. What was consistent across the core and the periphery was the view of intelligence as a singular capacity.

This unitary view of mind as a comprehensive and coherent entity is deeply entrenched in Western thought from Plato and continuing through Descartes and Kant. Traditionally intelligence is conceptualised as a singular faculty which can be brought to bear on any problem-solving situation regardless of the domain. Intelligence is therefore commonly considered a general ability that is found in varying degrees in all individuals and is central to performance in school. Although the first intelligence tests developed by Alfred Binet at the turn of the century were originally intended to diagnose different degrees of mental retardation these tools soon evolved into instruments which purport to reliably predict successful performance in schools.

However, Howard Gardner departs radically from this conception of intelligence by defining intelligence as the ability to solve problems or fashion novel products that are valued in one or more cultural settings. To identify an intelligence Gardner uses information from a multiplicity of sources. These include knowledge about normal development and development in gifted individuals; information about the breakdown of cognitive capacities under conditions of brain damage; studies of exceptional populations, including idiot savants, prodigies, and autistic children; a plausible evolutionary history; support from tasks in experimental psychology and psychometric findings; and cross-cultural accounts of cognition. Moreover, each intelligence must have an identifiable core operation or set of operations which can make sense of specific kinds of input.

An intelligence must also be susceptible to encoding in a symbol system- a culturally contrived system of meaning which captures and conveys important information. Further, each intelligence is, at least initially, based on a biological potential, which then gets expressed as a result of the interplay of genetic and environmental factors. From these windows to the mind Gardner has constructed a typography of nine intelligences.

His work affirms the plurality of the human intellect. Intelligence is therefore multiple. It must be noted however that after infancy, intelligences are never encountered in pure form. Rather they are embedded in various symbol systems, such as language; notational systems like maps, and musical or mathematical notation; and fields of knowledge like mechanical engineering. Intelligences are thus biopsychological constructs: they constitute cognitive resources by virtue of which an individual may effect a meaningful connection to a content area. Two of the most important implications of this work for Trinidad and Tobago are (1) the possible impact for ecological assessment of our abilities at all levels of the education system and (2) the use of jagged profiles of intelligences as a diagnostic and prescriptive tool. In the West Indies it is imperative that the curricular as well as the intentional, the structural, the pedagogical, and the evaluative dimensions of schooling take into account Gardner’s substantive insights into the nature of the mind as plural.