Every high school student should know more about multiple intelligences. Professor Howard Gardener in Harvard University advanced this brilliant thought in 1983. He also birthed a beautiful book titled Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligence. Then, Thomas Armstrong gelled this good idea in another book titled 7 Kinds of Smart.
Ideally, there are seven different intelligences, which influence career choices. High school students should discover and develop verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, body-kinesthetic, spatial, musical, inter-personal and intra-personal intelligences.
Foremost, people with verbal-linguistic intelligence excel in languages. They have the gift of the gab. They have silver tongues. They show their shine and sheen in language skills such as speaking, listening, reading and writing. Ostensibly, this is the special place of authors, lawyers, journalists and phenomenal public speakers.
Secondly, we delve deep into logical-Mathematical intelligence. People with this type of intelligence love numbers and solving Mathematical problems. They can give the decimal equivalent of fractions faster than anyone else can. Most of them become teachers of Mathematics. Some become accountants, computer programmers, architects and engineers.
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Thirdly, we focus on the body-kinesthetic intelligence. Most athletes evince this type of intelligence. The most gifted elite athletes scale majestic heights and bag big prizes on the global platform. World-class footballers we put on a pedestal also evince this intelligence.
Consequently, we move to spatial intelligence. People with this intelligence tend to favour the arts, which can be categorised as performing, visual and fine arts. People in this special sphere proceed to art schools. Some become very successful artists. People with spatial intelligence become architects, interior designers, graphic artists and website developers. In the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), there is the Arts and Sports Science career pathway. The art side explores performing, visual and applied arts tracks. The performing arts explores music, dance, theatre and elocution.
Moreover, there is musical intelligence. People who have this intelligence dream of becoming rock stars or lead singers in the band. Some dream of playing with a symphony orchestra. They pick up instruments and gain familiarity with them at a swift speed. They can hear music and almost magically know the notes they are hearing. People with this intelligence love performing. No wonder, they choose careers in the musical performing arts.
Penultimately, we get to inter-personal intelligence. We can also describe it as people skills. Plenty of people in this category are good at meeting and engaging new people. They do well when it comes to building useful relationships and making friends. They have what we call ‘personality plus’. This is where we have teachers and preachers. Then, allow me conclude with the intra-personal intelligence, or emotional intelligence. While inter-personal intelligence is the ability to communicate with others, intra-personal intelligence is the ability to communicate with oneself. People who possess this special intelligence have control over their own thoughts. In actual sense, this intelligence is useful in a career such as Counselling Psychology.
The writer is a career coach. vochieng.90@gmail.com.
By Victor Ochieng’
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