Tweeters,

Where are you on the continuum of bird watching "talent"? Do you have a an
idol or mentor who seems to be naturally far more observant than you can
even hope to become? Do you know someone who in just a few outings picked
up a dozen more subtle differences among the gulls--or the flycatchers, or
whatever--than you did? What's going on here?

Having been an elementary teacher for 28 years, and accustomed to leading
"science walks" on our school's nature trail weekly for the past ten years
with fourth graders, I have noticed that one to three students per class
typically have a marked ability to spot the winter wrens and quickly learn
to distinguish by sound the scrub jay from the Steller's jay and point out
the high-flying wing of Canada geese that I have missed and recognize after
one or two exposures twelve different wildflowers on the trail.

These students have had from "very little experience" on up to "very
extensive experience" with nature when they come to me, so I figure this is
not just a nurtured skill, varying only with family background. Also, these
students all seem to be intensely interested in what's "out there," probably
more so than their less-keenly-observing peers.

What I'm getting at is, what's going on here? Are these abilities a form of
intelligence? Is "nature smarts" something that Tweeters have noticed in
themselves and their comrades?

If we're talking about an innate ability that appears in varying degrees
among us, and then of course is developed to a different degree by each
individual, then who would be the prime exemplars--the geniuses--exhibiting
this form of intelligence? John Muir? Rachel Carson? Roger Tory Peterson?

POW! I'm brooding over these things periodically, and the other day I get
this ad for a conference on the "Multiple Intelligences," not the Seven
Intelligences that we educators have been hearing about for over a decade,
propounded by Howard Gardner of Harvard and applied to education by David
Lazear, but EIGHT intelligences. Gardner (without consulting me) has added
another intelligence to the list--just last year in 1997, and I missed it!

The eighth intelligence is called "naturalist", and I'm trying to find out
more about what it is, or what Gardner says it is. Is anybody out there
"up" on this?

My Internet search yielded one good article by Leslie Wilson and a reference
to a likely-good article in the September 1997 issue of _Educational
Leadership_, which I haven't seen yet.

As I understand it so far, naturalist intelligence is supposed to be the
ability to distinguish living things among other features of the physical
environment (obviously a quality having evolutionary advantages). Is it
more than that? Also, is there a site in the brain where this intelligence
is located, as the other intelligences, such as linguistic and
logico-mathematical and spatial, can claim? Leslie Wilson poses these
questions.

Why would anyone on Tweeters care about this stuff? Should I be talking
only to educators or intelligence theorists? I just thought that the people
who are most evidently exercising this alleged form of intelligence are
indeed the people on Tweeters.

And what does it matter? Well, it looks to me like a breakthrough for
environmental education. If teachers are advised to teach to all the
intelligences of their students, then the naturalist finally gets its due (I
naively hope). And it seems to me that this kind of intelligence--among
others--may be just what we want to develop in tomorrow's ecological problem
solvers.

Any thoughts, self-analysis, etc.?

Oh, the article I mentioned is at
http://www.uwsp.edu/acad/educ/lwilson/learning/natintel.htm

Darrel Whipple
Rainier, Oregon
dwhipple at columbia-center.org