Natalie Figueroa - SS

UTL-101
27 January 2018
Professor K. Martin
Intelligence, Learning Styles and Creativity in Education

The three presentations focused on discussing the ways students learned in the classroom,

the myths behind learning styles, and creativity in the classroom. The speakers each had their

own opinion on what was right and wrong in the education system for both teachers and

students.

The first speaker, Howard Gardner, focused on the multiple intelligence theory. The

multiple intelligence theory is a theory that documents the fact that human beings have different

intellectual strengths that are important to how kids learn. Students have different learning styles

(auditory, oral, and kinesthetic), so an education that teaches students the same way is like

picking one style of teaching and neglecting the way other students may learn best. There is a

myth that the only way to learn is by reading textbooks or hearing lecture and the only way to

understand what you learned is to take a short answer exam. Schools teach way too many

subjects and cover too much material. The result is that students have a very superficial

knowledge. In school, assessments are mystified and no one knows what’s going to be on the

exam, when the most important part should be knowing what it is you should be able to do.

People must see examples of places where the new kind of education works and students are

learning deeply and exhibiting their knowledge publicly.

Similarly, Tesia Marshik acknowledged that there are different learning styles like

Gardner did. The difference is that she believes learning styles are a myth and not effective for

students. “Over 90% of people believe they have a certain learning style,” but a study showed
that learning is the same regardless of how the content is presented. A meta-analysis paper over

40 years concluded that there’s no evidence that matching teaching styles with student

preferences makes a difference. Most of what you learn is stored in terms of meaning and not

tied to one particular sensory mode. It’s true that some people have better visual or auditory

processing skills than other people, but it does not mean they are only visual or auditory learners.

The best way to learn or teach something depends on the content itself and what you want to

learn. Many things can be taught and learned using multiple senses. For example, if you want to

teach someone football, you would take them out to the field and let them play with the ball

(kinesthetic), show them drawings of the different formations (visual), and explain the different

positions to them (auditory). Incorporating multiple sensory experiences into one makes it more

meaningful. The key idea is when something is pervasive, it does not occur to people to

challenge it. Labeling a student as a specific learner can be misleading and dangerous. If a

student learns a specific way and the teacher knows it, it might prevent the teacher from trying

other approaches that might help the student learn better.

Sir Ken Robinson was the speaker who differed the most from Marshik and Gardner.

Robinson spoke on schools killing student creativity. Creativity to him was defined as the

process of having original ideas that have value. He believed creativity is as important in

education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status. Most students lose their creative

capacity when they become adults because they are educated out of their creative capacities.

Instead of growing into creativity, they grow out of it and get educated out of it. Creativity puts

people in a place where they have no idea what’s going to happen in terms of the future, so it’s

education that’s meant to take them into the future they can’t grasp. The whole purpose of public

education now throughout the world is to produce “university professors.” Academic ability has
come to dominate our view of intelligence because the universities design the system to their

image where the most useful subjects for work are at the top. Instead of focusing on dance,

music, or art schools focus on teaching subjects such as chemistry and algebra; things most

students will not need or find useful for their creative needs.

The main point between all three speakers is that schools need to make a better effort to

educate students. Students come from diverse backgrounds and teaching them all the way the

books say isn’t always helpful and can deter them. Students have creative minds and restricting

them from expressing that can be misleading. Schools need to stray away from learning styles

and focus on teaching in a way where all students benefit equally and can succeed in exams.

Exams also need to test the student’s ability to know what they should be able to do and not what

they are able to memorize. The education system needs some reforming to stop producing

“university professors.”