“Better Days.” Sec Sonny Angara, Here’s An Intriguing Thought, How We Can Bring Out In Every Filipino Student From The Elementary Grades To PhD – We Teach Each One How To Think Their Own Genius!

Sec Sonny Angara, here’s my suggestion on how to be Education Secretary excited and challenging: “Declare nationwide each student should be taught how to think.”
(images: top from Pinterest, pinterest.com, bottom from r.search.yahoo.com

Thinking is personal. There are many excellent teachers who should be able to teach any of the 9 multiple intelligences (MI) that Harvard professor Howard Gardner proposed in 1983 in his multi-thinking book Frames Of Mind (Basic Books, 2011) – and the world has since approved.

I know a PH couple who founded a school based on Multiple Intelligences: Cielito & Pilar Habito, the Cahbriba Alternative School in Los Baños next to their residence. My children Neenah, Edwin, and Graciela studied there, and they all loved it – Neenah became a favorite of the President & Principal, ie, Ms Pilar.

Here is my list of Multiple Intelligences:

1. Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence (“Body Smart”)
2. Existential Intelligence (“Life Smart”)
3. Interpersonal Intelligence (“People Smart”)
4. Intrapersonal Intelligence (“Self Smart”)
5. Mathematical-Logical Intelligence (“Number/Reasoning Smart”)
6. Musical Intelligence (“Music Smart”)
7. Naturalist Intelligence (“Nature Smart”)
8. Spatial Intelligence (“Image Smart”)
9. Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence (“Words/Ideas Smart”).

That is to say, any elementary school child, high schooler, college student, even a PhD candidate would love to learn where and how s/he can excel and appreciate learning much more. Each student would learn how to think best in one’s own native intelligence!

Right in the Philippines, from above, we could learn from Ciel & Pilar Habito how to teach MI.

Somebody else wrote about them. ANN says, “The Habitos Wage A Silent Revolution In Laguna” (Author Not Named, 12 Nov 2001, PhilStar, philstar.com).

Ciel Habito is of course the ex-Director General of the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA). The couple learned directly from the original thinker of “Multiple Intelligences” when Ciel was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University.

Mr Sonny, I am myself a teacher – BSA major in Ag Edu 1965, UP Los Baños. I discovered my own personal intelligence – thus, in 2011, I was awarded “Outstanding Alumnus For Creative Writing” by the UPLB Alumni Association (UPLBAA) when Madecor President Elpidio L Rosario was UPLBAA President.

Mr Sonny, to start with, with some funding, I can write an interesting handbook on Multiple Intelligences for your beloved Department of Education (DepEd) to initially help everyone digest this intellectual food, to excite even the so-called dull students! With that handbook, we can excite private and public schools in the Philippines to teach MI.

There is a book, Multiple Intelligences Around the World, edited by JQ Chen, S Moran & H Gardner (published by Jossey-Bass/Wiley), “to show how Gardner's theory is applied in the international arena.” The contributors come from (alphabetically arranged): Argentina, Australia, China, Columbia, Denmark, England, Ireland, Japan, Norway, Philippines, Romania, Scotland, South Korea, and the United States.

With funding from the DepEd, I could write a book for Filipino educators to become smart themselves and teach Multiple Intelligences!@517