Article May 10, 1999 Issue

Discover your individuality, your gifts

Whatever your learning style, you can succeed.

By Judith Haugan Ryan

My work over the years in developing museum exhibits has required me to study learning styles and personality types. Museums make every effort to ensure that exhibits offer experiences for all types of visitors by presenting concepts in more than one particular way. Many businesses also use personality type testing to form balanced work teams or to help worker relations. And teachers use learning style research to help meet the needs of their students.

The more I worked in this field, however, the more I resisted being typecast or categorizing others in this way. I was also reluctant to think about my children as pigeonholed by their classroom teachers. I decided that I needed to understand better just how God's man is made. Does God categorize us in groups of abilities and disabilities?

Man, made in God's image and likeness, forever has the ability to reflect and express all of God's qualities, not just certain ones in certain limited ways. In her book Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy describes man as "the compound idea of infinite Spirit; the spiritual image and likeness of God; the full representation of Mind" (p. 591). As "the full representation of Mind," man has all of the qualities of God to express in abundance and without limit. He reflects Mind in unlimited intelligence, perception, and creativity. Since God, Mind, is the origin of all right and good ideas, man's ability to understand and express such ideas can never be limited as a result of narrow learning styles. Likewise, our individual capacity to express the qualities of divine Love, in compassion, caring, empathy, and warmth, are never determined by a personality type—these qualities demonstrate the activity of Love.

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