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physical. Go for a walk, a swim, or move your body while you practice
mentally, through visualization, what you've just put into your brain.
Especially if you're kinesthetic, feel free to get into
your favorite learning atmosphere and position. If you are an auditory learner, record
your notes on to a cassette tape over baroque music. And if you are a visual learner, be
sure to draw Mind Maps, doodles, symbols or pictures to represent what you are learning.
For a visual learner, a picture represents a thousand words.
For taking control of your life, all
people have what Dr. Robert Sternberg, Yale Professor of Psychology and Education, calls styles
of managing. "The ways in which students prefer to use their intelligences,"
he says, "are as important as ability. Children - in fact, all people - need to
'govern' their activities, and, in doing so, they will choose 'styles of managing
themselves with which they are comfortable.' The mind carries out its activities much as a
government. The legislative function is concerned with creating, functioning,
imagining and planning. The executive function is concerned with implementing and
with doing. The judicial function is concerned with judging, evaluating and
comparing. Mental self-government involves all three functions, but each person will have
a dominant form."17
For school teachers and seminar leaders,
we would hope the lessons are equally obvious: analyze each student's learning style, and
cater to it. You won't be able to do this for everyone all the time. But you can make sure
that every style is catered for regularly throughout every learning sequence. If you do,
you'll be amazed at how easily people can learn - and how much less resistance you will
find.
One of the first American schools to be based almost
entirely on Howard Gardner's principles is the Key Elementary School in Indianapolis. Walk
into the Key School and you'll find youngsters learning in all the different
"intelligences". Sure, you'll find all the traditional subject areas, such as
reading and math, being covered. But you'll also find everyone involved in music,
painting, drawing, physical activity and discussion. For four periods a week, children
meet in multi-aged groups called pods, to explore a whole range of interests such as
computers, gardening, cooking, "making money", architecture, theatre,
multi-cultural games and other real-life skills.
"Once a week," says Gardner, "an outside
specialist visits the school and demonstrates an occupation or craft. Often the specialist
is a parent,
Contents Page Preface
Introduction
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