According to Footnote 47,"Speaking to children early and often. This trigger was revealed in Hart and Risley's incontrovertible study and reinforced by the University of North Carolina's Abecedarian Project, which provided environmental enrichment to children from birth, with the study subjects showing substantial gains compared with a control group(224). On page 47, it states the triggers to more "intelligence"by "speaking to children early and often, reading early and often, nurturance and encouragement, setting high expectations, embracing failure, and encouraging a "growth mindset." And to tie this all together will come to the GxE paradigm, on how all these "triggers" the expressions on genes for reading, speaking, etc.
The Flynn effect shows that over year generation's IQ increases. As China's scores are above United States by average 30 points, should America try to get children to start learning at a younger age so we can catch up with the IQ gap of China and other countries that seem to be higher up in the IQ scale? If we want the future of our children to be successful and all be geniuses, why aren't these rules being implemented?
Sruthi Merneedi (gangasruthi@gmail.com)
Early education has always had better results than those education systems that start later in life. Children in China aren't achieving more success than kids in the U.S because they work harder, but because they started their education earlier. Many other countries use China's education system which is why they are getting higher IQ scores than those in the U.S. If the U.S wants to keep its status as a world power, the education system needs to be changed so that children can start learning at an earlier age in order to be at the same intelligence level of other countries. The gene environment interactions produce effects that are "due to a mixture of environmental factors (nurture) and genetic factors (nature)." (http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/gene-environment+interaction). This concept of nature versus nurture indicates that both affect the outcome of a situation such as an IQ score. If a child is surrounded by a higher level knowledge, it will affect the genetic factors in his or her body which will change the success to which a person can attain. “The environment a child is exposed to both in [childhood] and throughout the rest of his or her life can also impact how genes are expressed.” (http://psychology.about.com/od/early-child-development/a/genes-and-development.htm). An example of this fact is that if a person has a genetic code for the height they are to attain, it may or may not come true. The person’s nutrition and health depend on how tall he or she will grow. Reading, speaking, and interacting with a child at a young age will influence their genetic codes and favor more intelligence than what was possible before. An experiment in North Carolina, as Sruthi stated, showed that “the difference [between IQ tests] did not diminish over time; the IQ difference between the groups was still present at age twelve” (Shenk 224). Epigenomes are also indicators that genes can be changed from their environment. They are "histones protect DNA and keep it compact. They also serve as a mediator for gene expression, telling genes when to turn on and off." (Shenk 159). The actual DNA cannot be changed because it was inherited by one’s parents, but the packaging around it that tells when to activate or deactivate certain genes can be altered by the environment. This reason alone makes it apparent that early education will indeed have better results for success in intelligence in the future. Evolution also proves that genetic makeup can change as it passes down from generation to generation. “Natural selection results in the accumulation of those genetic variations favored by the environment” (Campbell 260). This fact states that genes are changed in order to fit the environment they’re in. Human beings have evolved into the form they are today because of natural selection and its ability to change their genetic makeup. In essence, environment definitely plays a part in determining the genetic effects in a person, so children should be taught at an early age in order to increase test scores and overall intelligence in the future.
ReplyDelete(Anisha Ghosh anishaghosh16@gmail.com)
ReplyDeleteAs many across the United States, as well as across many other countries, have seen, educational products for very young chidren are advertised on television all the time. We want our country to house the smartest, most advanced kids. Our society does as much as it can to start the learning process as soon as possible. We strive for every generation to be smarter than the last. We stress, as Shenk does, to speak to children early and often, read to children early and often, nurture and encourage as early as possible, set high expectations, embrace failure, and encourage a "growth mindset" (Shenk 47-48). The book "Making Connections" tells parents that "early experiences [reading, singing, talking, and playing] help different parts of your baby's brain grow and will have a positive effect on how he/she learns, thinks, feels and behaves now and later in life" (http://www.gov.mb.ca/healthychild/healthybaby/hb_makingconnections.pdf).
ReplyDeleteA baby's mind starts making connections between sounds and what's going on around him or her the second he or she comes out of mom's womb. So the more a baby sees and hears, the faster it will make connections and learn. And "during these early years, children form attitudes about learning that will last a lifetime" (http://www.nasponline.org/resources/home_school/earlychildmotiv_ho.aspx). There is definitely a "critical period" that a child most effectively learns and develops his or her brain. This is why, like what Anisha pointed out, places like China start teaching at a very young age, and encourage parental teaching before the children even attend school. But I do believe Chinese students work very hard to achieve so much at such a young age. Adolescent "students rise at dawn, disappear into school until dinnertime and toil into the late night over homework" (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/13/world/la-fg-china-education-20110113). So the strict Chinese do work very hard, and the school demands in China are much higher and more extreme than in the United States. In addition to their early development of babies, the Chinese usually have a very disciplined and tough outlook on education and success, which is why education is probably stressed a little bit stronger in China than in the US. The Chinese have been stereotyped as being very hard working and smart. The stricter behavior that the Chinese have seemed to inherit causes a more demanding and competitive environment for the Chinese, which results in China's long, hard school day and homework load.
For the US to close up the IQ gap between the US and other high ranked countries, a more rigorous education for very young children would have to be implemented into the daily lives of American families with young children. This strict teaching method would have to be accompanied by stricter parenting and teaching to further push and motivate the students into learning. And the strictness would have to be continue throughout a child's education. Whether the US is willing to make a couple of changes in it's teaching styles or not, it would take some time for the new method and mindset to spread throughout American parents of young children. Many Americans probably wouldn't agree with the such different philosohpy either.
Lili Malone (lilimalone@ameritech.net)