GCSE Achievement: Nature vs. Nurture

[PiqueABoo]

Provided you're careful with some of the notorious subtleties in this field, this paper is quite an interesting read: www.pnas.org/content/111/42/15273.full

"We found that, although intelligence accounts for more of the heritability of educational achievement at age 16 than any of the other domains, the other domains collectively accounted for about as much GCSE heritability as intelligence.

...

These genetic results turn some fundamental assumptions about education upside down. For example, one of the reasons that the contribution of intelligence is sometimes considered controversial when discussing educational outcomes is that intelligence is viewed as genetic, whereas achievement is thought to be due to environmentally driven influences from home and school. In addition, other behavioral traits such as self-efficacy are presumed to contribute to educational achievement for environmental reasons. However, our results suggest the opposite: Genetic influence is greater for achievement than for intelligence, and other behavioral traits are related to educational achievement largely for genetic reasons"

Haven't dared look at the paper as I had trouble getting my head around the quotes you gave! May try later.

But interesting for me as my girls are adopted. I am forever battling with working out what they've inherited/in the genes v what is due to early nurture (or lack of it) and how much of the latter can be assisted by better nurture and environment now.

without reading the paper I will give my interpretation given several years of experience from teaching in two very different types of schools - whilst nature in terms of intelligence has an impact obviously, in my experience, that majority of success comes from nurture. That's not to say that only educated, wealthy families produce high achieving children, its the force behind their ambitions - I have taught children from both ends of the spectrum in terms of background and both ends of the spectrum in terms of nurture and the majority of successful students are from the nurture ideal, the ambition ideal

But the paper is saying a bunch of behavioural indicators that correlate with GCSE achievement ('ambition' will be part of one of them) are significantly influenced by genes.

For instance my Y7 DD's personality hasn't changed much e.g. one of her early phrases was "Me do it!" and although my parenting may have added some diplomacy to that, it definitely did not create the intrinsic motivation and determination that is serving her well in terms of achievement.

Note this is population level stuff not absolute rules for all individuals and there is some wriggle-room, but "genetic thinking counters the deplorable tendency to blame teachers and parents rather than recognizing that learning is inherently more difficult for some children and that differences in children’s educational achievement are more a matter of genes than schools or home environments."

But the paper is saying a bunch of behavioural indicators that correlate with GCSE achievement ('ambition' will be part of one of them) are significantly influenced by genes.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A claim that diffuse, hard to define (how on earth do you test for "ambition?") personality attributes are genetically determined is going to require something a bit more than a twins study (as Gould points out, if you're an identical twin, you never need to work, you can just rent yourself out to studies) and some correlation.

"Extraordinary claims"

Extraordinary to whom and why?

I don't care what murky labels are used or whether they can isolate and measure one of these attributes any more credibly than some old Cosmo. quiz, but I'd decided that the majority of DD's behavioural traits were largely built-in long before reading any of this stuff. Thus I don't think it is that remarkable, but it is quite interesting because of the focus on our very own education system.

It's the blank-slate crowd who leave me gaping with those interesting assertions that Every Child Can Be A Brain Surgeon etc.