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Comment by camwest | Hacker News Reader

'According to James Traub (writing for The New Republic), Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences has not been accepted by most cognitive scientists nor by most academics in the education field. Indeed, George Miller, one of the psychologists credited with discovering the mechanisms by which short-term memory works, wrote that Gardner's theory boiled down to “hunch and opinion.”'

http://latestlearningcurve.blogspot.com/2010/01/learning-sty...

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I am editing a forthcoming book in the field, written by a teacher who earnestly believes in MI. Evaluating this teacher's data, his approach is clearly working for his students, but I think because of better engagement, more individual attention, and more interdisciplinary projects. Ultimately, I think we're cutting most of the MI stuff from the book as unsupported, although he will cite Gardner as inspiration.

The data I've looked at is more consistent with variation in subject performance primarily correlating with interest and personality, rather than MI.

> is more consistent with variation in subject performance primarily correlating with interest and personality

My hunch and opinion is that this is correct, too. ;) Also, it all kind of reminds me of the Pygmalion effect[1]. Other people tell us what we're good and bad at and then we run with it...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect

Sure, not everyone agrees with his theory. However, that's not the point of the article. :)

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