Could genetics inform our understanding about the learning process in ways that
have stayed hidden until now? Conor McCrory is yet to be convinced…
Is academic ability fixed or are students blank slates? Do schools make a big
difference to students’ lives, or is their destiny already settled?
Most educators will probably hold more nuanced views than those implied by the
dichotomous questions I’ve just posed, but the notion that some pupils are ‘just
good at school’ because of gifts granted to them by their biology isn’t new.
Such perspectives have waxed and waned in popularity over years, if not decades,
alongside changing trends n educational philosophy and evolving social and
political attitudes. As a primary school pupil in early 90s Belfast, I managed
to navigate my way through the 11-plus exam used to select entry to Grammar
schools.
We were never told that we were ‘genetically gifted’ as such, but there
was still a subtle implication that those who passed were simply ‘academically
good’, while those who didn’t, well … maybe weren’t. That said, we were
rigorously drilled for at least a year prior to taking the exams.
Evidently, they didn’t believe in our ‘innate ability’ enough to leave things
solely in the hands of biology, and must have felt out environment had something
to do with it… originally in
rest of article here in Teach Secondary