SciTech Daily reports on a recent study of identical twins versus fraternal twins that sought to determine the impact of environment versus genetics on general cognitive ability (GCA). If you read just the first few paragraphs, you would be left with the impression that the research found that "nurture"--i.e., the environment--was the dominant factor in determining GCA. I frankly was suspicious because decades of Head Start programs have shown no measurable long term differences. But deeper in the article was this:
As expected, genes played a big role in influencing general cognitive ability, with genetic influences measured by age 7 accounting for about half of the variation in scores at age 30. But environment also had a significant and lasting impact.
“One of the most exciting findings was that 10% of the variability in adult cognitive ability was explained by environmental influences before year one or two,” said Gustavson.
But!
The older the children got, the more influence genes had and the less environment had. “This suggests that even the pre-preschool environment matters,” Gustavson said.
So basically what prior studies had shown which is that early government intervention, such as through the Head Start program, had some temporary impact, but no long term benefits.
As someone who suffered through the Every Child Kept Behind programs, I can safely say that this never helped any of my classmates. Every year was a fresh surprise in just how much information they failed to retain, just as every year was the same horribly abbreviated information dump (with the exception of mathematics and one or two of the the highschool science classes).
ReplyDelete"Every Child Kept Behind"--that is a good one.
DeleteEnvironment can't increase, only decrease IQ potential.
ReplyDelete