Maggid

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...Howard Gardner, a professor at Harvard, defines seven types of intelligences. Some students, he explains, are more skilled with language, while others are more logical or spatially perceptive. Some learn by physically acting out new skills, and others are better listeners. Some learn better in groups, and others are more introspective. These are the multiple intelligences. It's no secret that we each learn best in different ways, but the million-dollar question is how teachers can best teach to all students, to all learning styles. This is the central objective of my rabbinate: to be a Jewish educator who can reach each student in the most optimal way for that student to best comprehend the content knowledge. And it is a challenging objective. As a student of Gardner, I understand that I cannot value any one of the intelligences over another -- and therein lays the challenge of meeting each student's needs as a learner.

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The debates among educators today focusing on the best practices for teaching are not new to us. In fact, we see them come alive each year at the Pesach seder. The midrash of the arba'ah banim, the Four Children, presents four individuals who ask about the tradition in very different ways. The wise, the rebellious, the simple and the one who does not know how to ask. They are four very different learners who need to be addressed as individuals. And the Rabbis of the Mishnah, in their wisdom, understood this well. In Mishnah Pesachim, they prepare us for the seder by teaching u'lefi da'ato shel ben aviv melamdo -- that parents are meant to share their Jewish identity with each child "according to his or her intelligence," taking into account background, age, personality, attitude and learning style. Perhaps without possessing the language that Gardner introduced to us more than 20 years ago, the rabbis still understood the concept of multiple intelligences.