COLUMN ONE : Teaching That Goes Beyond IQ : Schools try to open new doors for children based on the theory that we have many kinds of intelligence. Students stumped by traditional education may flourish with lessons geared to musical or spatial skills.

The assignment--read a chapter in a history book about the Erie Canal and the westward movement--meant trouble for 13-year-old Garrett Santos. A bright child who has trouble reading, the Modesto eighth-grader told his teacher he just wasn’t getting it.

Her response?

Singing. “We studied some old folk songs--’15 Miles on the Erie Canal,’ ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,’ ” Garrett said. During the chapter test, he ran the lyrics through his head to help him recall important facts. “Every time I got to a question I couldn’t remember, I thought about the songs.”

The result? “I got an A on the test. I probably would have bombed it,” he said, if his teacher had not tried a less conventional approach.

What his instructor did was simple: She found another way to reach Garrett’s mind, realizing that for him music opened a door the written word could not.

Such new ways to teach rely on a complex and provocative theory called multiple intelligences.

It is controversial because it attacks the classical notion of what constitutes intelligence. Yet a growing number of educators say MI (as it’s called by adherents) offers tremendous promise for unlocking children’s minds.

Originated by Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner 12 years ago, the theory rejects the mainstream view that people have a single core mental ability that is measurable in an IQ test.

Gardner believes that intelligence entails a set of mental skills that enable us to recognize and resolve problems. He has identified seven types of intelligence that he says we each possess to some degree.

The first two are widely accepted: mathematical-logical (as seen in scientists and tax assessors) and linguistic (politicians, lawyers).

The others are less conventional: spatial (engineers, inventors); bodily kinesthetic (dancers, surgeons); musical (composers, critics); interpersonal (understanding what makes people tick, as in psychologists) and intrapersonal (being able to understand and learn from one’s own feelings, as in poets).

Gardner correlates each type of intelligence to a region of the brain; based on research with brain-damaged people, he suggests that the seven intellectual domains operate autonomously.

“All of us in my generation were raised on something called IQ,” said Brown University professor Ted Sizer, who founded the Coalition of Essential Schools, a highly regarded national school reform network.

“What Howard has done is blown that up. If not an IQ as a nice little fraction, what is there? Is there something called innate intelligence? (Gardner) pushes those basic questions if not all the way back to square one, then close to square one.”

Although gaining acceptance, the theory still inspires criticism, even from experts who like much of what it says.

“I don’t agree with Gardner’s use of the word intelligences ,” said Al Shanker, the progressive head of the American Federation of Teachers. “I think what he calls intelligences is a talent.

“I would view intelligence as some sort of broader function of the mind, a managerial function. You can say someone has musical intelligence, but it’s better to say musical talent. “

Nonetheless, Shanker sees educational uses for MI theory: “Howard Gardner recognizes the importance of mathematical and linguistic competence,” the two skill areas most valued in and measured by schools. “What he is saying is there are other competencies that are very important in human life, as well.”

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Gardner said he hopes that the theory will help personalize education, which he says is traditionally based on the idea that all children learn the same way.

“The principal educational implication of multiple intelligences is to look at kids very, very carefully and see what would interest kids as much as we can,” Gardner said. “It is the direct opposite of uniform schooling, where you teach all kids the same and test them the same.”

In the classroom, however, Gardner warns that his concept can be misinterpreted to justify activities that may be fun for children but have little value.

Moreover, because MI-based schooling is so new, there is little empirical proof of its effectiveness. Test scores have risen at some schools that use his theory, but changed little or slumped slightly at others.

Yet stories of MI’s effectiveness abound at many campuses. Teachers say that discipline problems have decreased and that students seem to retain knowledge longer. This may be because they are more engaged in schoolwork and are given a variety of options for learning--instead of just reading a book or writing an essay.

A spatially adept student might be better able to show what he knows about “Charlotte’s Web” by creating a cardboard diorama instead of by writing a report. A linguistically talented youth might be more interested in reciting verses about volcanoes than by building a model of one.

“Seven kinds of intelligence,” Gardner wrote in “Frames of Mind,” his 1983 book introducing the theory, “would allow seven ways to teach, rather than one.”

No one knows how many schools are attempting to apply the theory. But it is safe to say that membership in what has been dubbed “the MI underground” numbers in the hundreds. Project Zero, a Harvard research institute co-directed by Gardner, maintains a list of 55 schools that use it. Another 222 public schools in six states follow an MI-centered instructional program developed by the Los Angeles-based Galef Institute.

An MI network, run by a former teacher-turned-consultant in Chicago, has signed up 600 members in three years and offers a newsletter, electronic bulletin board and other resources.

Three conferences last year on MI in schools drew 1,600 educators and 500 are expected to attend another conference in Tucson this month. The nation’s largest organization of curriculum specialists recently sent its 100,000 members a teacher’s guide to MI, written by a Sonoma County consultant who has made a career of spreading MI theory to education’s grass roots.

Leaders in the education Establishment are receptive to the concept of more than one form of brain power, but worry that oversimplifying MI could result in a lowering of standards by some teachers.

“The potential (impact) is very great, provided that school people look at this in a balanced way,” Shanker said. “What is likely to happen is some school people will pick this up and turn it into a fad, de-emphasizing substantially all forms of traditional learning and setting up schools where youngsters are doing dance, music and all sorts of other things.”

In fact, Gardner says he has seen just that sort of misuse of his theory. He recalled visiting a classroom where the teacher had students crawling on the floor, pretending to be wolves. “People think the point is kids crawling on the floor or kids dancing or kids singing. But I say, ‘What is that achieving’?

“My own interest is in using the idea of multiple intelligences for educational ends. I am very interested in kids understanding more, in kids mastering disciplines, finding something that interests them and getting deeply into it.”

Gardner was an obscure psychology professor when “Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences” was published. It has sold steadily--recently, about 20,000 copies a year--and the 10th anniversary edition has been translated into five languages.

Gardner deliberately exerts no quality control over schools attempting to make the leap from MI theory to practice. In fact, the past recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius award confesses he is totally bored by MI.

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Thus, no two schools seem to do MI exactly the same. Schools that infuse their teaching with MI-inspired practices typically tie in other innovations, so disentangling its purported benefits from other approaches is difficult.

The theory’s rising popularity coincides with a growing reform movement that includes an emphasis on personalizing education--allowing children to learn at their own pace in so-called ungraded primary classes, for instance, or breaking large classes into small clusters to increase participation.

It dovetails with the basic tenet of the school reform movement of the past decade--that all children can learn. And it is an assault on the kind of thinking embodied in “The Bell Curve,” the recent book that argues that intelligence is immutable and genetically based.

Gardner’s kinder and gentler view of human potential is “really catching on,” said Stanford education professor Mike Kirst. “It plays into the idea that most all kids have intelligence.”

At a growing number of campuses, that has led to a more creative--and labor-intensive--mode of teaching.

Maureen Manning, a fourth-grade teacher at Emma Shuey Elementary School in Rosemead, remembers being the “kind of kid who got nailed by test scores.” She knew she was smart, but teachers rarely asked her to demonstrate what she knew in the ways that she felt most comfortable.

“I know something. I can sing it, I can dance it,” she said.

So when Manning became a teacher, she slipped music and art into as many lessons as she could.

But she felt out of step, even though she knew intuitively that the traditional ways schools transmit and assess knowledge--fill in the blank, read this chapter and answer questions--are not how many children learn best.

Now Manning, a 17-year classroom veteran, has been liberated. About two years ago, most of her colleagues at Shuey embraced MI through a program designed by the Galef Institute, a nonprofit education center in West Los Angeles. The teachers try to integrate as many of the intelligences as they can into all lessons.

Students love the new approach. One of Manning’s students said: “She turns math into art and PE. It’s a more fun way to learn.”

Attendance is up at Shuey, and so is enthusiasm. “I see a real happiness, a relief” in students, Manning said. “(They think) ‘Oh, I can do this.’ ”

“It takes the blinders off educators,” said Patricia Bolanos, principal of the public Key School in Indianapolis, which became the first school in the country to apply MI theory in teaching gifted youngsters in 1984. “It makes it possible for educators to recognize giftedness in other areas.”

In 1987, the Indianapolis district opened an MI-based magnet elementary school for students of all ability levels. Two years ago, Bolanos added a middle school and has her sights set on a high school.

The Key Schools’ 300 students are expected to master the basics through three nine-week courses that blend disciplines and are linked to broad schoolwide themes.

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Several times a week, students visit the “flow” room, a place for serious play, stocked with puzzles, board games and books. Here they are encouraged to enter a state of “flow” where they lose track of time and, in choosing their own activity, discover “intrinsic motivation” to learn. Observers record their choices and include that information in reports to parents.

Letter grades are out and paper-and-pencil tests are de-emphasized in favor of projects or videotaped presentations that students produce to show their knowledge.

The aspect of Key’s program that most raises the eyebrows of traditionalists is that it gives equal weight to educating each of the seven intelligences. So learning to read is considered no more important than learning to play the violin--or dodge ball.

The school also caters to students’ strongest intelligences. So those with particular deficits--in math or reading, for example--are not given additional help but are advised to seek tutoring.

“It’s building on strengths rather than (correcting) weaknesses,” Bolanos said.

Other schools are less extreme.

At Garrett Santos’ school, Hart-Ransom Elementary in Modesto, teachers have embraced MI, but without abandoning the traditional goals of early schooling--such as learning to write a term paper.

“We are not here to make children proficient in all seven intelligences,” district Supt. Dennis Boyer said. “It’s fine if they become proficient in all seven, but our mission is to produce an educated child who can do the things our community says children should be able to do. Our community is conservative. Our focus is to move children through the traditional education system.”

Boyer said his teachers regard MI as a framework for restructuring the traditional curriculum so that students are given at least seven ways to learn it.

In Jerrianna Boer’s seventh- and eighth-grade classes, students learn writing by exploring their reactions to a piece of classical music, first by making crayon drawings that fit the mood, then writing a story infused with those emotions.

“It’s a more interesting way to teach,” Boer said. “It’s also more difficult . . . a lot more work for the teacher than just saying read this story and answer these questions.”

How well is it working? Because the school began phasing in the MI approach only last year, Boyer said, it is too soon to tell what impact it will have on standardized test scores.

A two-year study of 1,000 students at four Galef Institute campuses showed significant increases in language ability, but multiple intelligences is just one of the major components of its program.

At Key School, Bolanos puts little stock in state-mandated exams, which show Key on a slight downward trend in language arts scores over the last four years. Mary Mickelson, director of testing for the Indiana Department of Education, said she is concerned about the slump but that it may reflect the mismatch between the old-style tests and Key’s radically different approach to learning.

She said a more telling sign of MI’s impact may be the Key School’s 97% attendance rate, which is about four points higher than the state average.

“Something is happening at that school that causes kids to want to come,” Mickelson said. “I suspect students are learning very well.”

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The Seven Intelligences

Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences maps out seven intelligences, or mental capacities, of humans. Schools have begun adapting his provocative theory to change the way they teach. Here are brief definitions of the intelligences and examples of actual lessons inspired by his theory.

MUSICAL: The capacity to perceive, express, transform or discern musical forms.

* Jerianna Boer’s class at Hart-Ransom Elementary School in Modesto uses music and art to teach writing. She plays a selection from the movie “Fantasia” to show how color, form and music can suggest a story.

LINGUISTIC: The capacity to use words effectively, in writing or in speech, to persuade, to remember information, to explain.

* Adele Logsdon got her second-grade students at Hart-Ransom to rewrite the old folk tale “The Magic Fish” in their own words, an exercise that showed their understanding of its theme as well as offering practice in writing.

LOGICAL-MATHEMATICAL: The ability to use numbers effectively and to reason well, to recognize and solve problems using logical patterns to categorize, infer, make generalizations and test hypotheses.

* Logsdon told her second-graders that a spider can jump 30 times its body length, then asked the youngsters how far they could jump. The lesson tapped mathematical and kinesthetic intelligences.

SPATIAL: The capacity to perceive the visual world accurately, to transform and recreate visual perceptions.

* Sheryl Chaffey’s fourth-graders at Hart-Ransom visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium for a unit on habitats and then constructed dioramas depicting their favorite animal’s living space.

BODILY-KINESTHETIC: Expertise in using one’s body to express ideas and feelings, often goal-oriented, as in the fine motor ability of a sculptor or the flexibility and grace of a dancer.

* In addition to rewriting the “Magic Fish” tale, Logsdon’s students worked together to act it out, using bodily-kinesthetic and interpersonal skills.

INTRAPERSONAL: The capacity for self-knowledge--to detect and discern among one’s own feelings--and the ability to use that knowledge for personal understanding.

* Boer’s seventh- and eighth-graders read the story “The Gift of the Magi” and then wrote in their journals about caring, focusing on a person they know who needed caring.

INTERPERSONAL: The ability to notice and make distinctions among other individuals, being attuned to their moods, temperaments and intentions.

* At Emma Shuey Elementary in Rosemead, Linda Miglione’s first-graders paired up with special education fifth- and sixth-graders to share skills. The first-graders taught the older students how to make a Christmas ornament. The special education students taught the younger students how to jump rope.