What's Holding Your Brain Together?

I've been thinking a lot about molecules, because they help me visualize thinking and learning... There are these different atoms, and they are bigger or smaller, and they stick together or they don't, and... stay with me.

Here's a sketch of 8 kinds of intelligence (sort of borrowed from Dr. Howard Gardner), as a molecule. In this example, all the intelligences are the same size:



But if you think about yourself or someone you know, you'll probably notice that one of these seems to fit the best. It's kind of the center. Many people have strengths in a lot (or all) of these areas, but there's usually some basic starting point. For me, that is in the visual/spatial area. For my daughter, it's all interpersonal. My son, verbal.

So then, maybe the molecule starts to look like this:


Now the bits are different sizes, with maybe one big one and a few mediums and some smalls.

But then, they stick together, don't they? So then it starts looking like this:



But there's still something missing - the connections. I think that your center, or preferred way of thinking, acts like a passport to the other areas. It's like glue, holding your thinking together. So then you get something like this:



Where things are connected together in various ways - some areas are bigger, some bonds are stronger -- depending on who you are.

This is nothing new - there's been a ton published on learning, and connections, and learning styles, and all of it. But this exercise helps me clarify how best to approach teaching art - because when I teach it's not that I'm just hanging out in the visual/spatial atom, it's that I'm communicating visually with people who have all sorts of configurations in their brains.

Drawing addresses all of these - movement, logic, space, self-expression, self-examination, nature, story, rhythm.

That's why I draw with different people differently and why drawing jams, where people get to shape what goes on, are so healthy - as opposed to saying, "Here we are in visual-land and I'm not too good at that, can't wait until I can escape..." when trying to complete some sort of a project and make it look right.

Ken Robinson says we shouldn't have subject areas, we should have disciplines - because that frees us up to deal with kids who think better while moving, or who hear music in everything, or who make everything into a connection with other people...

This all makes me want to stick together styrofoam balls with toothpicks.