Final Book Reflection

One of the key concept from the book (chapter 8), Why Don’t Students Like School?, deals with the long-standing argument of which has more influence on intelligence, hereditary factors or environment. First, the definition of intelligence must be defined. To paraphrase from the American Psychological Association, “intelligent people can understand complex ideas and use different forms of reasoning.” Certainly intelligent people also reason well and catch on to new ideas quickly.
This is not a new argument or question. However, the author’s point of view led me to do further reading and research. My comments that follow are a combination of the author’s book and my own reading.
All through history, people have been intrigued by intelligence thus leading to attempts to measure human intelligence. The ancient Chinese used a form of testing to select candidates for civil service positions. Scholars such as Plato searched for clues into human intellect. William Duff, 18th century, investigated the creative and cognitive capabilities of genius and speculated that imagination was an important part of intelligence. During the 19th century, major schools of psychology in Europe began to develop more invasive techniques to measure intelligence. By the nineteen hundreds, Alfred Binet had helped develop the first successful intelligence test using the concept of mental age. This was followed by the work of David Wechsler who introduced his own test, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales. This test included verbal and performance subtests and was designed to look at real life situations. It also began the comparison of an individual’s mental ability with others of that same age.
The book’s author discussed nine principles of the mind. His eighth principle, intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work, was discussed in chapter 8. Willingham believes that genetic inheritance impacts intelligence but mostly through environment. It was interesting to note that he thought the percent that genetics plays on general intelligence changes being somewhere around 20% for young children and up to 50% for adults.
Willingham as well as others quote a lot of data from studies of identical twins (those who lived in the same household and those who were separated at birth), fraternal twins, siblings, and adopted children. I think it would be safe to say that all research points to intelligence being influenced by both nature and nurture, but there was certainly wasn’t consensus on exactly what percent genes play and what percent environment plays. Perhaps the influences that we also need to also focus on include prenatal care, socio-economic status, nutrition, and continued health care.
As an educator, I believe and support Willingham’s principle – intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work. However, higher intelligence tends to lead to prolonged schooling and longer schooling leads to higher IQ. Also, students who believe intelligence can be improved with hard work get better grades than those who believe intelligence is an immutable trait.