Noting that the collective stories of special education have grown out of a tradition that, by its nature tends to perpetuate problems, this book examines such narratives and how they influence thinking and belief about intelligence and learning. It begins by examining how the current story of intelligence developed and illustrates some of the consequences of accepting the concept of intelligence as anything that can be measured or quantified--and defined as normal. The second chapter discusses how deviation from what is considered normal came to be defined as learning disability, and therefore emerged as parallel to the concept of intelligence. An alternative approach to learning, one founded on describing people's qualities rather than measuring quantities thought to represent their thinking and actions, is narrated in chapter 3. Chapter 4 replaces the idea of intelligent with smart, and describes eight ways of being smart, which use the broad concept of multiple intelligences as guidelines. Two tools are presented in chapter 5, which individuals can use to describe how they themselves are smart and how other people are smart. The last chapter describes two programs, Project Smart and Project ABLE, which are a practical expression of the new alternative to learning. Contains 93 references. (BAC)