All right, I’m back.
Awhile back I had listed the multiple intelligences theory. I have not checked my archives on what I’ve posted so far. I think I’m going to go ahead and review them again.
Now, multiple intelligences theory says that everyone, including DHH people, have different ways of dealing with information given to them. I feel that for DHH people, MI theory figures very prominently in their lives. DHH people have to use their MIs to express themselves in different ways, to compensate for the hearing loss and lower speech abilities.
If you want further information about MI theory, it is widely available across the Internet, and there are countless books and articles about it as well. Just type in “multiple intelligences” and several sources will pop up for you to read and consider.
Generally, it is Howard Gardner of Harvard University, who developed this theory. The MI theory is still under some controversy. It is possible more components will be added or the existing concepts might be changed.
Let me briefly review the MI components. Mr Gardner advanced the observations that people have musical ability, bodily-kinesthetic, logical-mathematics, linguistics, spatial, interpersonal ability, intrapersonal ability, and naturalistic in differing amounts.
People, even professors, have asked me over the years why DHH people have difficulty with written English. I believe, along with how you handle your hearing loss and your visual ability, and how DHH people use MI components, explain a great deal in how they manage living in an audiologically-dependent society.
Briefly, the MI components are: musical, bodily-kinesthetic, logical-mathematics, linguistics, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic.
I should also point out visual ability ties in heavily for DHH people and how they use it with their own multiple intelligences.
I am not going to try to explain it all in this posting. I have vowed to myself to explain each MI component in a posting each day, until it’s all covered.
So, for today, it’s musical. There are many DHH people that can play/read/understand music. Generally though, they either have some residual hearing at birth, or lost their hearing sometime after birth. We don’t need to discuss Beethoven in detail. Everyone knows that even after he became deaf, he continued to play music. It was his main form of intelligence mode, how he expressed himself to the world.
I have seen DHH people play the piano, the flute, and the guitar. Let me say here that some DHH people may have some residual hearing, in which they can still hear certain tones, and still want to play. For example, I can hear the flute better than the piano. I tend to hear higher pitches better than low ones. But I can’t express myself through music. I just don’t have that musical intelligence or passion.
I also have seen DHH people play the piano and then tell me it’s meaningless to them. They tell me they played as a young person and then lost their hearing, and still retain the ability to play. But it means nothing to them. I find that interesting, in how they expressed themselves about that.
Tomorrow, I will discuss bodily-kinesthetic, an important MI component for DHH people.
