According to John Medina, “every brain is wired differently” (Medina 86) which means that the experience we get during our lives creates quite different connections in our brains.
In our life experience we can find a lot of examples which support this idea. We all speak English and all of us know how to spell English words but how we feel, how we perceive them is quite different. When I say table, I imagine a small round table made of glass on which we usually put newspapers, books and magazines. When one of my friends says the same word, she associates it with the image of a big wooden table at which all her family gather in the evenings. In addition, my glass table is transparent, and one of my friend is black just because we get used to see them like this in our homes. I assume that in the cultures where people don’t use tables or use them very little, e.g. in some Oriental cultures where people usually eat sitting on the floor, the word table would be associated with quite different images, maybe with writing desks.
So the word table is common and known to everyone and it represents a freeway in our brain, whereas its perception is a small route which is different for each of us and all our associations with this word depend on our life experience. Moreover, these images change over time. When I was a baby, I didn’t know that the glass is a fragile material, I didn’t know that playing football at home could cause its break. Only later because of learning process I knew some new properties of my glass table. Therefore, we may see how learning changes, or rewires, our brain forming new connections between so usual and common concepts.
In accordance with Howard Gardner’s theory, there are seven types of intelligences which are “independent” and combined with each other at the same time in our personality (Gardner 115).
In my life I’ve been meeting many people demonstrating these types of intelligences. One friend of mine has absolute pitch and able to properly sing any song even if she heard it for the first time in her life, another person who I know, can dance and all his motions are very precise and smooth. It is evident that my first friend’s intelligence is musical whereas the one of my acquaintance is bodily–kinesthetic. However, I cannot say that the one can do nothing but singing and the other is always dancing since both of them are students, so they do use in their learning a number of skills which are proper to other types of intelligences, e.g. logical-mathematical, verbal-linguistic or interpersonal. So this example proves that intelligences do not exist in pure form and that they are always combined with each other, otherwise people would never be able to create something really valuable for human society and to live in harmony.
As for me, I assume that I’m rather strong in verbal-linguistic intelligence which, in my opinion, predominates in my mind and determines my skills since I like writing essays, reading good books and learning foreign languages. I believe that this intelligence is combined with musical one because in communication I can differ various intonations and tones and understand their meanings. I wish I could develop bodily–kinesthetic intelligence more as I like watching people who can dance well.
Works cited
Gardner, Howard. Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice. Basic books. 1993.
Medina, John. Brain rules : 12 principles for surviving and thriving at work, home, and school. Seattle, WA : Pear Press.2008.
