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Multiple Intelligences Reaches the Tibetan Children's Village
In the early nineteen fifties, the Chinese Communist government under Mao Tse Tung undertook a campaign of genocide of the Tibetan people and their culture. China did not recognize Tibet as an autonomous nation and believed the two should be united politically. Being devoutly pacifist, the Buddhist people of Tibet were easily overcome and today it is difficult to find a map indicating the nation of Tibet. Millions of Tibetans were and to this day continue to be tortured and murdered by the Chinese government. Tens of thousands more, including the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and secular leader of the Tibetan people, have fled their homeland.Today, Tibetans are in many countries around the world but the majority, through the graciousness of the Indian government, have settled in India. The Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile are established near the village of Dharmsala in the north of India. Because thousands of Tibetans have followed His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, to Dharmsala, naturally there are many children as well. In the 1960's, the Tibetan Children's Village (TCV) was first established and today over 2400 children reside and are being educated there. The majority of these children are orphans whose parents have died at the hands of the Chinese, remained in Tibet, or not survived the journey,.
The school at the Tibetan Children's Village is a tribute to the resilience and resourcefulness of the Tibetan people. On a recent visit to TCV, I worked with the staff and the students and was personally transformed by the experience of interacting with people whose entire focus, not only in their personal and collective lives, but in their educational programs as well, is spiritual. The school itself lacks many of the resources taken for granted in western schools. Moreover, professional development of the teachers is limited by geography and financial means.
While facilitating a workshop on Multiple Intelligences in New Delhi a few months earlier, I was informed about TCV and the eagerness for new ideas among the staff and administration of the school. I offered to share some of my expertise and experiences with the school and in November, 1998 I returned to Delhi and undertook the long journey to the Punjab, up into the Himalayas, to Dharmsala and finally to TCV.
The location itself is spectacular. Carved into the side of the mountains, surrounded by the imposing forests of giant rhododendrons and the colorful and ever present prayer flags of the Tibetans, looking out over the subcontinent of India, one cannot help but realize what a singular location this is and how the environment must influence the sense of wonder and aspiration these people possess. But a preoccupation with the scenery is quickly overtaken by an immersion in the rich culture and joyful lives of these people who have endured so much.
The children themselves live in "families." Each "family" of twenty to thirty children and one "mother" live in a relatively small house. They are families in the best sense of the word. They pray, play, eat, and study together; boys and girls, ages four through fourteen. When they reach Grade Nine, they move into hostels: Grade Nine Boys, Grade Nine Girls, Grade Ten Boys, Grade Ten Girls, and so on. Regardless of age, living situation, or individual differences, one cannot help but be struck by the profound respect the children of all ages show for each other, their elders, and their environment.
Many of these children have undergone tremendous hardship traveling on foot from Tibet through the mountains. The journey takes weeks and is often made without guidance or support. Some have traveled alone or in pairs, hiding from the Chinese in the daytime, trudging through snow at night. Hunger, fear of the unknown, frostbite and sometimes death are typical of the challenges they have faced. And yet, these kids are happy, loving, and optimistic about their future. And they are diligent about their studies. Every evening I watched the high school students who would circumambulate the temple that stands high amidst their little village for hours at a time, studying their notes for upcoming exams.
Each morning I awoke to the sounds of chanting, not from the monks, but from the children. Before breakfast, each family would chant together and the crisp mountain air was filled with their prayers. After breakfast, the children would don their uniforms and walk to the classrooms. School too begins with chanting. Here they would gather with their classes and again chant to remind themselves of their primary ambition, to follow the path of Buddhism. The heroes of these students, I came to learn, were not musicians, movie stars, athletes or leaders, but saints and moral exemplars including people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
The school from early childhood through Grade 12 is quite traditional. Instruction is pedantic with teachers lecturing, students taking notes, and the use of regular exams. But again, the focus in every subject is guided by the foundation of Buddhist philosophy. The literature often concerns stories of saints and avatars. The writing focuses on personal awareness and spiritual growth. Math and science are seen as bodies of knowledge to understand the world in which this incarnation is unfolding, the one where His Holiness, the fourteenth Dalai Lama has joined us, the one where the Buddha himself once walked. Even the artwork of students reflects the imagery and beauty of the spiritual world they experience.
There is a great willingness among the teaching staff to improve themselves professionally. They expressed a desire to learn more about the human brain and how learning takes place neurologically, about the concept of Multiple Intelligences, and about its implications for learning. I have worked with teachers all over the United States and other parts of the world, but seldom have I had such an attentive, reflective, and engaged audience. And seldom have I laughed as much. It is difficult to imagine how these people remain so happy, separated from families and homeland, but again, their basic nature is predominantly spiritual.
As I worked with the TCV staff, we discussed Multiple Intelligences, we simulated MI lessons, we sang, dramatized events, built models, collaborated on projects, created charts, posters, diagrams and graphs. In short, we expanded their instructional repertoire. Then we began to look at lesson planning and curriculum design. They developed hands-on, interactive, experiential lessons for their students. Finally we examined assessment utilizing a Multiple Intelligences framework. They discovered they could measure student learning not only with standardized tests but also with more performance-based assessments: project presentations, demonstrations, exhibitions and performances using the arts.
The clear implications of MI for western teachers were equally relevant to the Tibetan teachers. They realized that even in a homogeneous culture each student may think and learn in a unique way. They discovered that by providing multiple entry points into the content area, more students would be successful academically. And interestingly, they found that each of them as teachers had unique intelligences they could use not only to optimize their own teaching but also to support their colleagues.
As they returned to their classrooms, they were filled with the now conscious realization that they could provide their students with new opportunities to further develop areas of strength while at the same time bolster areas of weakness. As teachers, I think we intuitively recognize that kids think and learn in these different ways that Howard Gardner has identified. The genius of Gardner's work may be that in articulating these intelligences, he has provided us with an infrastructure that we can use to develop new approaches to learning in the classroom. The Tibetan teachers -- like teachers everywhere -- immediately began addressing this in their classrooms, so the students quickly began experiencing their lessons in multimodal ways.
And to me it again reinforced the notion that Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences has universal implications for education. I was further reminded that some of the greatest benefits of MI theory when it is applied in the classroom, are its ability to enhance academic achievement, transform teacher beliefs, and improve student motivation and attitudes about learning just as well in a Himalayan village as in the cities and suburbs of America. As educators continue to refine and extend the uses of Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences, its universality and capacity to enrich learning should not go unnoticed.
Bruce Campbell and his wife Linda have recently co-authored a new book about schools which have worked with Multiple Intelligences for more than five years. The results show dramatically what Bruce has described in this article; that in schools with established MI programs academic achievement goes up. The book Questions Answered: The Results of MI Programs, published by ASCD, is in press. He co-authored Teaching and Learning Through Multiple Intelligences (Allyn and Bacon, 1996) with Linda Campbell and Dee Dickinson. Bruce is a teacher and consultant who has done MI training throughout the US and in many other countries.
Bruce can be contacted via email at bcampbell@teacher.com.
Copyright © January 1999 New Horizons for Learning.
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