Howard Gardner Quotes

No two children learn in the same way. While we might agree that every American eight-year-old should be able to read and multiply, beyond those basics, there are few reasons to make every student follow the same path.

Emile Zola was a poor student at his school at Aix. We are all so different largely because we all have different combinations of intelligences. If we recognize this, I think we will have at least a better chance of dealing appropriately with many problems that we face in the world.

There is no single way to educate.

The answer is not to standardize education, but to personalize and customize it to the needs of each child and community. There is no alternative. There never was.

I realize the differences between my children and use what works for each of them individually.

Not every child learns the same way. I could not learn through my eyes. Reading was impossible. Math, to compute it in my mind, was impossible. I learned everything through listening.

There will be no more one-size-fits-all. Education will respond to you.

The difference, so observable in men's understandings and parts, does not arise so much from their natural faculties, as acquired habits.

The biggest mistake of past centuries in teaching has been to treat all students as if they were variants of the same individual and thus to feel justified in teaching them all the same subjects the same way.

In other words, if a teacher only teaches in one way, then they conclude that the kids who can't learn well that way don't have the ability, when, in fact, it may be that the way the teacher's teaching is not a particularly good match to the way those kids learn.

Biologically and physiologically, we are not equal. Some of us learn better at different times of day. Some learn best visually, some auditorially, some tactilely, by touching.

I was home-schooled.

We need to have an educational system that's able to embrace all sorts of minds, and where a student doesn't have to fit into a certain mold of learning.

I read so slow. If I have a script, I'm going to read it five times slower than any other actor, but I'll be able to tell you everything in it. It kills me that there are standardized tests geared towards just one kind of child.

It disturbs me when Obama says in the State of the Union address that he wants to make dropping out of school at 18 illegal, because people learn differently and before there are forms of learning for every type of person in the world, we shouldn't be condemned for leaving.

Our school systems have to realize that everybody doesn't learn the same way, and no one learns without some emotional support.

Most teachers are not trained in how boys and girls learn differently.

If the education and studies of children were suited to their inclinations and capacities, many would be made useful members of society that otherwise would make no figure in it.

A treatment method or an educational method that will work for one child may not work for another child. The one common denominator for all of the young children is that early intervention does work, and it seems to improve the prognosis.

Anything that is worth teaching can be presented in many different ways. These multiple ways can make use of our multiple intelligences.

Instead of a national curriculum for education, what is really needed is an individual curriculum for every child.

Some people absorb in different ways. I didn't realize until I was 15 years old how much I retained.

Teachers and parents who incline toward the authoritarian attitude are scornful of “frills.” They consider lecturing, memorization, recitation, and grading to be the basics, as they remember them from their own school days. They believe in withholding promotion form children who have not satisfactorily completed the year’s work in all subjects, despite the evidence that when children are made to repeat a grade, they do not do as well in the following years as similar children who were promoted. To authoritarians, education is not a means to help each child to mature but a series of hurdles over which everyone, of no matter what capability, must jump. A policy of withholding promotion means ignoring the fundamental and complex question of why the children failed and what needs to be done to correct that problem.

The individualization of learning fundamentally redefines the role of assessment.

We need to make sure we have in every school teachers trained and qualified to make sure every child, including children with different learning styles, succeed.