ISCC Workshop Lesson 1: The 8 Realms of Multiple Intelligence Self-Analysis (December 11, 2023)

      Lesson Series 1, Ilocos Sur Community College (ISCC), Vigan City

Living with Nature Center, San Vicente, Ilocos Sur

December 11, 2023

The 8 Realms of Multiple Intelligence

Self-Analysis in 5 Workshop Lessons

Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature School on Blog

Part 1 - Discover and Cultivate Your Multiple Intelligence (The 8 Realms of Intelligence)

Part 2 - Multiple Intelligences of Great Men and Women Who Changed the World

Part 3 - Workshop Exercises for Social and Natural Sciences

Part 4 - Multiple Intelligences and Secret of Success

Part 5 - Search for meaning at the throes of death.

Part 1 - Discover and Cultivate Your Multiple Intelligences

(The 8 Realms of Intelligence)

Dr Abe V Rotor*

All of us are endowed with a wide range of intelligence which is divided into eight domains. It is not only IQ (intelligence quotient) or EQ(emotional quotient) or any single sweeping test that can determine our God-given faculties. Here in the exercise, we will explore these realms. With a piece of paper score yourselves individually in each of these areas. Use Scale of 1 to 10)

1. Interpersonal (human relations)

Sometimes this is referred to as social intelligence. Leaders, politicians excel in this field. “They exude natural warmth, they wear disarming smile,” to quote an expert on human relations. Name your favorite person. I choose Nelson Mandela, Condoleezza Rice and Henry Kissinger.

2. Intrapersonal (inner vision self-reflection and meditation) Priests, nuns, poets, yogis, St. Francis of Assisi is a genius in this domain. Didn’t Beethoven compose music with his inner ear? Didn’t Helen Keller “see” from an inner vision?

3. Bodily-Kinesthetic (athletics, sports, body language, dance, gymnastics)

Michael Jordan excels in this domain. Now think of your idol in the sports world, or in the art of dance. Lisa Macuja Elizalde is still the country’s top ballet dancer.

4. Verbal-Linguistics

There are people who are regarded walking encyclopedia and dictionary. The gift of tongue in the true sense is in being multilingual like Rizal.

5. Logical-Mathematical

Marxism is based on dialectics which is a tool in studying and learning. Likewise, this realm includes the intelligence of numbers – math, accounting, actuarial science, etc. This is the key to IQ test. Einstein, Newton, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle are my choices.

6. Musical (auditory art)

Mendelssohn, Mozart, Chopin, Abelardo, Cayabyab, Lea Salonga – name your favorite. Beethoven is one of the world’s great composers, yet he cannot dance. I like to listen to Pangkat Kawayan play Philippine music.

7. Visual-Spatial (drawing, and painting, sculpture, architecture, photography)

The great artist, Pablo Picasso, was robbed in his studio. Hog-tied, he carefully studied the robber, the way an artist studies his model. After the incident he sketched the face of the robber and gave it to the police. The police made 100 arrests but never succeeded in pinpointing the culprit. The sculptor Rodin wanted his subject to look as if it is melting. What could be a better expression of poverty for his masterpiece, The Burghers of Calais?

8. Naturalistic (Green Thumb, Relationship with the Natural World)

There are people who are said to have the “green thumb”. Their gardens are beautiful even with little care. There are those who can predict weather, and tell you if the fish bites, or it is a good hunting day. They pick the reddest watermelon, fullest macapuno nuts, just by feel and sound. Good doctors, I suppose have the green thumb too.

What are your top three? Can you see their relationships? Relate them with your strength. On the other hand, in what ways can you improve on the other realms?

Make full use of your strength. And remember there are early and late bloomers. Nothing is too late to be able to improve on one’s deficiencies.

Maybe you lack a good foundation to explore your talents in a certain domain. But why don’t you catch up? Do you recall late bloomers who succeeded in life? As you reflect on your scores I’ll play for you on the violin On Wings of Song by Felix Mendelssohn. Fly, fly high and be happy like the birds. Just don’t be Icarus.

Reflect on the following:

1. Your strength and you weakness

2. Your “idols” and models

3. Resolution and affirmations ~

Part 2 - Multiple Intelligences of Great Men and Women Who Changed the World

Identify the particular realm of intelligence of each of these great men and women.

1. Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the great English explorer and the first white man to penetrate the heart of Africa and establish the first hospital for the natives there, was very effective in his mission not only because he was a good physician, but he was gifted with other talents. He was a minister, a musician, a naturalist and a philanthropist. Although he was criticized by his detractors for his philosophy on “reverence for life,” his outdated medical practices, and racial attitude, he was admired by mankind, and his legacy of dedication to others endures. The world will always have the memory of a giant who tried in his singular way to love as Jesus loved, oddly but honestly lived his beloved song: The deed is everything; the glory naught.

2. Carl Gustav Jung was a master of the abstruse. His explorations took him through yoga, alchemy, fairy tales, tribal rites of the Pueblo Indians, Hindu mandalas, extrasensory perception, prehistoric cave drawings – and an estimated 100,000 dreams. But when Dr. Jung was accused of having left medicine for mysticism, he replied that psychiatry must reflect all of man’s experiences, from the most intensely practical to the most tenuously mystical. If the details of his work were sometimes foggy, his overall purpose was clear: to help man live at peace with his unconscious. 

3. Mother Teresa required poverty, chastity and obedience but also a fourth vow, service to the “poorest of the poor.” More than 3000 sisters of the missionaries of Charity joined her to pursue the religious path, aided by brothers in a separate men’s order and a host of lay co-workers. Together Sister Teresa and her followers operate a network of some 350 missions, spread across scores of nations, that administer hospices, food centers, clinics, orphanages, leprosaria and refuges for the insane, retarded and aged. What drove Mother Teresa into this deep dedication? She received a “call within a call” – a special vocation in which she felt God directing her to the slums. Such call is reminiscent of the voice that commanded Joan of Arc to lead the French army against the English. She did not live to see the liberation of her native land. 

4. Alexander the Great – His teacher was Aristotle, the greatest scholar, naturalist and philosopher, who said, “It is easier to make war than to make peace,” an advice that guided Alexander as he conquered the whole of Europe, the Persian Empire and Asia, as he tried to unify empires into One World, the idea of “united nations.” 

5. Winston Churchill, one of the greatest statesmen the world has known drew the chart to victory and peace not only with the pen and in the war room, but with paint brush on  canvas. How did he find time and concentration to paint on the bank of Thames when Hitler was pounding London with prototype ballistic missiles? 

6. Amadeus Mozart was compared to anything in Nature that the author Helen Henschel thought of him as beautiful smiling sunny landscape. “There would be gray skies too – and rain, and cloud, and always in the end, a shining rainbow.” The music of Mozart exudes this vivid imagery. 

7. Robert Baden-Powell, the father of scouting is said to have saved his small camp which withstood 217 days against 9000 well-armed Boers – through the art of bluff. There must have been something else beside bluff that made his plans work effectively. 

8. A fine soldier though Alfred the Great was, his heart was elsewhere – in religion and law, education and art and literature. At his court he gathered all the scholars he could persuade to settle with him, while he consulted the elder men who were wise in the law. 

9. Francis of Assisi was also a poet as is proved by his hymn “The Canticle of the Sun”, the song full of the freshness of a re-born life, expressing his love of all creation. 

10. Jean Henri Fabre PHOTO, explorer of the insect World, grew up a happy child in spite of poverty. He paddled and went about exploring, found the stream that fed the pond and made a little water wheel. Throughout his life he was a shy man, ill at ease with adults but happy with children. He wrote in his diary, “There were five or six of us: I was the oldest, their master, but still more their companion and their friend.”

11.The loss of an arm and an eye did not stop his career. When he was ordered to retreat facing apparent naval defeat with the Spanish armada outnumbering his own fleet, Horatius Nelson, put on the telescope on his blind eye and said, “I don’t see the enemy, sir,” and then proceeded to fight and won. Dying on the deck of his fighting ship his last words were: “Thank God, I have done my duty.” 

12. Florence Nightingale the founder of the nursing profession had the love, almost the adoration, of her patients. Her patience, her determination and persistence were tested during the Crimean war. Miss Nightingale and 37 women volunteered to work in the war front’s hospitals. In a few weeks the death rate in these hospitals dropped from approximately 42 percent to 2 percent. Florence Nightingale brought healthcare in the battlefield, bringing reforms in management and technology in military hospitals in Crimea where a war was then raging. She instilled discipline among the wounded and sick soldiers while keeping their spirit high, and brought to the attention of the political leaders and society their plight. She demonstrated how valuable women are in a world dominated by men. The world still loves and remembers her as “The Lady of the Lamp.” 

13. Excerpt from the autobiography of Louis Pasteur PHOTO: “I have not yet dared to treat human beings, but the time is not far off, and I am much inclined to begin by myself – inoculating myself with rabies and then arresting the consequences.” Pasteur had never lacked the courage and had never hesitated to come in contact with the most dangerous of the contagious diseases. But it never became necessary because of the arrival of little Joseph Meister, who was bitten by a mad dog. The test was made on the boy and saved his life.”  

                                        

14.The most exciting stories in science involve the sudden spark when mundane observation meets sudden inspiration. Such is the case of the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming, Galileo watching the swing of a lamp in the Cathedral of Pisa and deduced from it the law of the pendulum, and Sir Isaac Newton watching the fall of a apple and deducing the law of gravity.

It is as humorous as the sudden realization by Archimedes of the law of buoyancy. But stories of this sort are not coincidental or incidental; they are deliberate efforts of testing a theory and looking for evidences and application. Such is the story of Louis Pasteur whose discoveries in microbiology led to a new field of medicine which is immunization, Christian Barnard revolutionizing surgery when he conducted the world’s first heart transplant. Such stories continue to amaze us. The Human Genome Project has opened before us a new horizon in medicine heretofore unknown - gene therapy. 

Cause – The Common Denominator.  The common denominator in the lives of these great men and women is that they cling to a cause. Often, it is a very personal one that this borders on egotism. But the cause for which one lives is not for him - it is for others, others’ welfare. That cause is therefore bigger than oneself. It is for which one can give himself away, unselfishly, convincingly at sacrifice level, often renouncing good life. 

Great men are those whose vision and mission are aimed at entering that great hall of humanism – the regard for love, equality, justice, compassion and faith in fellowmen. We quite often hear that the lives of great men and women are the influences of heredity, training and environment. True. But the great reserve is the eight realms of intelligence. We do not go far to prove this contention for our own national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal lived this model life.~ 

Part 3 -  Workshop Exercises for Teachers (and Students) in Social and Natural Sciences

                                              Dr Abe V Rotor

Exercise 1 – Peace-of-Mind Square

(How “balance” are you today?)

POM - When you wake up in the morning look at yourself on the mirror and imagine the four sides of the mirror as a perfect square. Draw, to show each side represents the following: Mental or Intellectual, Psychological or Emotional, Physical and Spiritual.

You are not “square” if you are not relaxed. You do not have POM (Peace-of-Mind). Strive to keep that mirror of yourself a perfect square everyday. In this exercise, evaluate these four aspects and draw the lines representing it. Notice how distorted your square is. It is time to reflect. This takes five minutes with an appropriate music background like Meditation by Massenet and On Wings of Song by Mendelsohn.

1. What is the role of each of the 4 factors to attain POM? Explain. How can you make your day - every day for that matter - square?

Exercise 2 –Get out of your box!

The Magic Box

The figure is an imaginary box constructed with nine (9) dots. Now this is the instruction. With a pencil draw four (4) continuous lines without lifting the pencil and hit the nine dots without repeating or missing any one.

It takes several trials. And when you have finally found the secret you will realize that you really have to “get out of your box” to be able to do it. Learn to explore outside this box. Break out your shell of biases, pre-judgment. Move away from your zone of comfort or fear. Get out and seek the world outside your waterhole, outside your comfort zone. While doing this exercise the musical background is one with a happy note, such as The Lonely Goatherd or The Happy Farmer. It may take around  30 minutes for the whole exercise, giving importance to its analysis and application.

Exercise 3 - Venus de Milo

How do you make the figure look more beautiful?

This is either an individual or group exercise. An outline of this goddess of beauty is given to each participant or group. The instruction is: Supply the missing arm. Those working as a group may confer and work as a team.

This exercise aims at creating awareness of limitation and humility. It reinforces leadership skills through reflection rather than immediate action. Communication and motivation are also enhanced. It reminds us that “beauty lies in secret.” The suggestive nature of a thing makes it more exciting. Venus de Milo is like poetry. Completing it is like writing an essay.  How do you envision the armless goddess? Discussion follows.

Part 4 - Multiple Intelligences and Secret of Success

What made your “idol” successful?

This is a class exercise. Each member of the class thinks of his “hero” or his model, a person whom he reveres and admires so much (hinahangaan). Without revealing to anyone who he is (he must be a real person, dead or living, local or foreign), he proceeds in examining his qualities. After 3 to 5 minutes, he describes his “idol” using keywords.

The teacher writes down on the board the keywords. Everyone is called to share until the board is sufficiently filled up. Now the teacher makes three columns with the following headings: attitude, learned (in school), inherited (minana) and fate (tadhana). Classify the qualities enumerated under each column. Which column has the most entries? The least? Can you offer any explanation to this observation? Compute the percentage of each category.

Attitude  /  Learned (school)  /  Inherited (minana)  /  Fate (tadhana)

Think of yourself now. Relate the qualities of your “idol” with yours. Are you following his footsteps? What is the greatest lesson you learned in this exercise?

Part 5 - Search for meaning at the throes of death.

Now, this is a serious exercise. It may bring out an experience we may have tried to forget a long time ago. Or it may still be fresh in our memory. Is it worth recalling it? Perhaps it helps us in refocusing the direction of our lives. It is important to pause and remember our resolutions we may have failed to keep. This is the instruction.
Recall your experience when you got closest to death. Recall what you resolved while you battled for life, and what things you promised to keep once you get back to your feet? Here is a solemn moment, and it is a very personal one. An appropriate music background is in the tune of “Maalala Mo Kaya?”, “On Wings of Song”, or “The Dying Swan”. Sharing follows.~

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About Dr, Abercio V. Rotor, Ph.D.

Award-winning author of "The Living with Nature Handbook" (Gintong Aklat Award 2003) and "Living with Nature in Our Times" (National Book Award 2008); Recipient Father Jose P Burgos Achievement Award (2016); professor, University of Santo Tomas, De La Salle University-D; St Paul University QC;columnist Bannawag Magazine, former Director, National Food Authority; and Consultant on food and agriculture, Senate of the Philippines. Founder, Living with Nature Center, San Vicente, Ilocos Sur