From Inquiry to Academic Writing A Practical Guide, 3rd edition

294 chAPTER 10 | FRom REvising To EdiTing: WoRking WiTh PEER gRouPs

Jegier 5

are targeted in most school settings, Gardner proposes that

people can be intelligent in other distinct ways. He came up

with eight intelligences, including spatial, bodily-kinesthetic,

musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist. Besides

having different intelligences, students are unique because of

their different learning styles (for example, one student might

be a visual learner while another learns better from listening

to a lecture) and the varying paces which they learn and retain

material (Christensen, Horn & Johnson, 2008). This leads us

to the question: if all students have different intelligences and

learn in different ways, what reasoning do we have to support

that standardizing their education would be an effective teach-

ing method for all of them? Is providing the exact same instruc-

tion to all students fair, even if such a cookie-cutter method of

teaching only caters to those who are “intelligent” in the lin-

guistic and logical-mathematical sense? If the goal is to educate

every student, standardization is not an effective way to do it.

Rebecca’s group begins with a brief discussion of her introduction

and then turn to Rebecca’s argument. they ask questions and offer some

reflections that they hoped would guide Rebecca toward making a more

explicit claim about school reform.

Kevin: I really like your introduction and agree with the idea that

we live in a world where we expect instant gratification. I

know I get pretty impatient when I have to wait for anything.

Michaela: And you use a great phrase, “a culture of impatience,”

to describe the problem.

Jasmine: Yes. But isn’t the paper supposed to be about the purpose of

education? You eventually connect the idea of impatience to

the purpose of education, you know, to respond to a genera-

tion of students like us who have been brought up on tech-

nology. school isn’t very responsive to the way we learn. Isn’t

that what you are arguing?

Rebecca: Okay, I see what you are saying. But I wanted to write an

introduction that would capture your attention with some-

thing relevant. I’ll have to think about that.

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