Rethinking Genius

John Kendall was a cornerstone in the early days of the Suzuki Method. You can read more about him on Wikipedia but, in a nutshell, he is credited for helping bring the approach over to the U.S.A. In addition he was a violin teacher of more than fifty years. Something that always stuck with me when hearing about stories of his teaching was his "seven steps" approach. The concept boils down to the idea that your short term memory is capable of retaining, on average, seven items.   The short term memory is fast but not powerful.  There is a limit to how many items each person can remember in his/her short term along with a limit to the duration the short term memory retains this information. Obviously the goal is to make those short term memory items make the switch to long term memory. But in order for this to happen the items must be reinforced and repeated.  This means the exact  action needs to reoccur multiple times. This is extremely important to understand whe

A subtopic in the field of education I find especially interesting is the idea of "intelligence."  I love Howard Gardner's books on his theory of multiple intelligences.  Definitely worth a read if you have not already done so. The word itself is commonly understood as being synonymous with "book smarts."  As in, someone who can regurgitate facts quickly and accurately must be deemed intelligent.  Furthermore, the intelligent children in the classroom are generally seen as those with the highest grades (read: test well). This is not intelligence. The literal definition for intelligence according to Merriam-Webster: "The ability to learn or understand things or to deal with new or difficult situations." This means that intelligence has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with tests an an ability to accurately determine the correct multiple choice question.  Those skills are a part  of intelligence but not intelligence itself. Intelligence is