Nature vs nurture—Which is more important?
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Nature vs nurture is a well discussed topic regarding which factor leads to a smarter child. Personally, I define nature as being naturally smart and of high intellectual ability, while nurture means a good upbringing, the willingness to study hard. So, which one is more important?Nature basically means, being naturally smart, being smart at birth due to better genes from parents. It means that a person being smart is based on the success of his/her parents. But this is not exactly true considering a person could happen to shape after all the bad traits of his/her parents. However, to be naturally smart is as good as having a head start in this journey of life. Personally, I have encountered many a times whereby my friends never studied but still do better than me in test and exams. Although this is theoretically incorrect, considering the fact that our parents and teachers always told us, to get good results, we must study hard. But, being in the gifted education programme makes it rather obvious, which students have a higher intellectual ability.
However, does this mean, genes and hereditary and parents are the sole or main reasons to determine a child’s birth? I beg to differ. In such a world, poor people and unsuccessful people would never need to give birth again, ‘polluting’ the world with bad genes. And soon enough, it will be a unbalanced world where everyone has such smart and intelligent parents that, it is impossible to tell who is smarter and more capable, thus survival and jobs allocation would be rather random. So, this tells us that no matter our natural ability, it is possible to make up for. So what if I child has a high intellectual quotient if he does not work hard. What if a child is less smart at birth, but devotes eighteen out of twenty four hours to work? Does this mean he would not succeed? NO. If this was to be true, what about Albert Einstein, did he have a fantastic family background? NO.
Personally, I really feel that natural ability is important. Assuming life is a 100m race, it gives us a 10m headstart. But it doesn’t define life, there is still a 90m of race left to run. With hard work, perseverance, nothing is impossible. And one day, the hardworking person would definitely outdo the person with natural ability. Thus I conclude, nurture is more important and natural.