Ch. 14: MI Theory & Existential Intelligences

Gardner had worked on the 9th intelligence, but it is hard to bring “EXISTENTIAL” to the classroom. We are in a trap when we must keep church and state separated. Armstrong defines this intelligence as, “the capacity to locate oneself with respect to the furthest reaches of the cosmos—the infinite and the infinitesimal—and the related capacity to locate the significance of life, the meaning of death, the ultimate fate of physical and psychological worlds, and such profound experiences as love of another person or total immersion in a work of art” (Gardener, 1999). In this intelligence we are suppose to detect who we are, what is evil and where we are going in life. Existential includes all the aspects it needs, yet is still an iffy subject by means of Bible and such. The Bible is usually frowned upon in schools and causes teaching in a spiritual manner difficult. Although we don’t know it more than half the time, we do use existential in our teaching by immersing ourselves completely in our teachings, giving new strategies, bringing up religious events (Holocaust) and mentioning the Greeks, who created math methods.