‘Genetics outweighs teaching, Gove adviser tells his boss’, ran the Guardian headline.
Clearly, though, his boss isn’t listening.
Yes, there’s pretty good evidence of a sizeable genetic component in people’s ability to score well in IQ tests. Do you know what that means?
It means people are different.
It means that pupils in our schools differ fundamentally, and not just because of the relative fecklessness of their parents, or the relative laziness of their teachers.
It means that if you insist on one narrow set of measures of success (and I don’t just mean IQ tests), you will inevitably be condemning many pupils to failure however nastily you berate their parents, however much you undermine the morale of their teachers.
We know increasing amounts about the ways in which genes influence people’s medical history. That is making us realise that no ‘one size fits all’ prescription will do; that we’re going to need to go further in the direction of personalised, customised interventions to help people be as healthy as they can be.
So, if we’re discovering increasing amounts about the ways in which genes influence people’s educational history…
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