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Taare
Zameen Par
by Steven Rudolph
January 15, 2008
If you haven’t yet seen Aamir Khan’s new film Taare Zameen Par, go see it. I believe it is the best-made Indian film to date. Aamir Khan is a talented storyteller, who has captured the essence of India’s educational dilemma in a moving drama about a dyslexic boy, cruelly abandoned by a world that fails to understand his condition and his hidden talent. The film does an excellent job of pointing out how each child has unique abilities, and how parents and teachers often become so obsessed with children’s weaknesses, that they fail to notice and celebrate their strengths. It further demonstrates that many parents and educators lack critical knowledge of the human brain and the learning process, and which specific techniques can be used to enable children to overcome their weaknesses.
From an educator’s perspective, what was so exciting about the film was the clear depiction of the multiple intelligences concept. This concept states that there is not just one intelligence, but that there are multiple intelligences, namely: linguistic, logical-mathematic, musical, bodily, visual, naturalistic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. In the story, the troubled boy, Ishaan, shows prodigious visual abilities through his artistic activities (creating remarkable drawings and paintings), and vivid imagination (represented in the maths test scene with the animated outer space sequence). He also displays exceptional naturalistic intelligence, indicated by his fascination with the fish and his strong kinship with the neighbourhood dogs.
Ishaan, however, is plagued by dyslexia, a condition that causes numbers and letters to become mixed up, making reading of language and mathematical equations a formidable challenge. In this respect, we might say that Ishaan has trouble with his linguistic intelligence. However, dyslexia is a condition that can be improved. Exercises have been developed that make use of bodily intelligence (e.g., writing numbers in the sand or on a person’s arm, or counting by walking up and down stairs), and visual intelligence (e.g., writing letters and words in large typeface, in colour, or on grids). In essence, this is pacifying the dominant intelligences that are fighting for attention, and enabling the weaker intelligence to get its due attention.
I’m sure most people will love this film for the sheer beauty of the story, the direction, the acting, the music, and the message. But apart from that, I do hope that parents and educators pick up on the powerful educational underpinning of the film—that there are multiple intelligences and that there is more than one way to be smart. And further, that it is critical for us to understand the uniqueness of the child and how by using different techniques to address different intelligences we can help learners achieve their full potential.
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