‘Genetic and environmental factors interweave to form the fabric of neurological organization. The pattern of the fabric is seen in the behaviour of the organism. (LeWinn, 1969)
‘In essence, neurological organization is the process whereby the organism, subject to environmental forces, achieves the potential inherent in its genetic endowments. As such, neurological organization should engage the attention of the pediatrician, educator, psychologist…psychiatrist, neurologist, cyberneticist and opthalmologist. In fact, all…who are interested in the achievement of human potential should have a role in the study and development of human neurological organization.’ (Ibid.)
‘Because of the inextricable relationship between genetic and environmental factors, it is impossible to determine in any individual the precise extent of the role played by either category. Yet, in terms of the process of neurological organization the significance of this interaction lies in the fact that what the environment influences are those genetic endowments which are susceptible to modification. In the interaction between man's genetic endowments and his environment it is the susceptibility of his neurological organization which is of special importance.’ (Ibid.)
No examination of the nature/nurture argument would be complete without looking seriously at those who support the Nature side. I honestly think that the facts, as assembled above, should convince any fair-minded individual that not matter what nature has wrought in a newborn baby, all would come to naught unless the environment is favourable.
The truth is, however, that the supporters of the nature argument do not appear to be fair-minded.
‘There is a curious fact about research in North America into inherited intelligence. All of it is the direct result of private funding by a small group of New York-based lawyers, ex-military men and businessmen. This research – attempting to establish that intelligence is a matter of genes and not of environment and that, in effect, some people (and races) are born superior – has increased markedly over the last couple of decades…
‘The group which so favours hereditary research is called the Pioneer Fund. It was founded in 1937 by ex-Harvard and Princeton millionaires with a keen interest in eugenics and the Fund still supports the eugenicist line, some find sinister, of – “improving the population by control of inherited qualities’.
‘The most elaborate research funded by Pioneer is the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart by a team headed by Thomas Bouchard Jnr. This, for a dozen years has been conducting extensive studies of more than a 100 monozygotic (from the same egg) and dyzygotic (not identical) twins reared apart. Multiple measures of personality and temperament, occupational and leisure-time interests led to a conclusion, published in 1990, that “70% of the variance in IQ was found to be associated with genetic variation.”’ (From an article in the Weekend Guardian, July 18th 1992, by Peter Lennon.)
5. All ability is learned ability
“Children and genius have the same master organ in common – inquisitiveness. Let childhood have its way and as it began where genius begins, it may find what genius find.”
(Edward G. Bulwer Lytton)
Human beings are not born with any fixed talent; ‘No baby’s ability is inborn. Everyone is born as white paper, then develops as the workings of life help her acquire ability. All babies in the world are equally wonderful beings. I would like you to know this.
‘Human beings are born without talent. People are what they are as a result of their own specific environments. The life force adapts itself to fit the environment…To survive, humans instinctively adapts themselves to their surroundings.’ (Suzuki, 1969)
Shinichi Suzuki was a Japanese violin teacher who developed a method of teaching the violin to very young children. He called his method the ‘Mother Tongue’ method, and based it on the way that young children learn to speak the language of their environment. Both my two children learned to play the violin using the ‘Suzuki method’. (Incidentally, the Suzuki method is not just for children. I also learned how to play the violin – up to approximately grade three – and I taught myself to read music! All in my late forties!)
Masaru Ibuka, one of the co-founders of the Sony Corporation, helped set up the Early Development Association in Tokyo. He says:
‘No child is born a genius, and none is born a fool. All depends on the stimulation of the brain cells during the crucial years. These years are the years from birth to three. Kindergarten is too late.’ (Ibuka, 1977)
Shinichi Suzuki, the violin teacher posed the question, ‘How come a child from a bilingual family grows up speaking the languages it has been exposed to? Does this indicate inborn talent – or the brain’s response to external stimuli?’ (Suzuki, 1969)
A leading light in the early development field is Glenn Doman of the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, Philadelphia. Drawing on his experience in and study of children with brain damage, he argues that children in their early years need a comprehensive programme of stimulation. Everyone is born with the same number of brain cells – it’s the number of connections between those cells that determines how intelligent any organism is. And it is stimulation that creates those connections. Doman has indeed created such a programme of stimulation – he calls it ‘The gentle revolution’ (Doman, 1969). Critics of this programming have termed it ‘hothousing’ and decried its achievements
Along with others – Michael Howe, Suzuki, Ibuka, Fuller – Doman maintains that we are all born with the potential to become geniuses and it is only the lack of stimulation that prevents that occurring.
Suzuki says that all talent is taught, Howe says that it takes thousands of hours of training to create a genius. For instance, he estimates that Mozart must have had between 20 – 30,000 hours of training.
‘Talent is not inherited. If a baby is brought up listening to a recording of a song out of tune, her ears will become accustomed to it, and it will be very hard for her to change later on. Thus, if we wanted to, we could make all children throughout the world tone-deaf. But it is clear that if we can do this, there is no such thing as intrinsic musical talent. This fact needs to be understood. We need to understand the importance of the ear.
‘In short -
1. We must study how to develop talent through education.
2. We must realize that talent, not only in music but in other fields as well, is not inherited. (Suzuki, 1969)
Lewinn says that all brain growth (connections) is the result of challenge – no challenge to the organism equates to no connections being formed.
‘Why do all children possess the marvellous ability to speak their mother tongue quite effortlessly? Therein lies the secret of how to educate all human ability. Schools instruct and train as hard as they can, without good results...With the emphasis put only on informing and instructing, the actual growing life of the child is ignored. There has been no thorough research into how ability is acquired. The word education implies two concepts: to educe, which means to 'bring out, develop from latent or potential existence' (Concise Oxford Dictionary), as well as to instruct. But the emphasis in schools is only on the instruction aspect, and the real meaning of education is totally forgotten.
‘I want, if I can, to get education changed from mere instruction to education in the real sense of the word - education that inculcates, brings out, develops the human potential, based on the growing life of the child.’ (Suzuki, 1969)
‘The development of ability is straightforward. This can be absolutely relied upon. People either become experts at doing the right thing, which is seen as a fine talent, or they become experts at doing something wrong and unacceptable, which is seen as lack of talent. So it behoves everyone to become expert in the right things, and the more training she receives the better. Depending on these two things - practice and practice of the right things – superior ability can be produced in anyone. For twenty years I have watched with my own eyes the education of thousands of children, as well as the effect on them of the superiority or inferiority of their parents and teachers and I can say, without any hesitation whatsoever that this is true...
‘I firmly believe that any child can become superior, and my confidence has never been betrayed. I am determined that each and every child shall become superior, for if one does not I consider it a personal failure that I cannot condone.’ (Ibid.)
It’s not hard to find examples of talent being taught. For the past fifteen or so years, at any one time, there have been ten or a dozen children from the Taunton area in the National Children’s Orchestra. (There are actually three orchestras, under the one generic name.) These are all violin or viola players, taught by two local Suzuki teachers, and none of the children are tested for musical ability before commencing music training. There is nothing special about children from Taunton –put these teachers down anywhere in the country and after a few years they will be sending a similar number of children to the National Children’s Orchestra!
The potential is there in every child to be a musician of a very high standard!
To repeat Suzuki’s words, “Any child has the possibility to be musically inclined.” By which he means, every child!
There is another fundamental question that must be asked, which is:
6. Is intelligence a static entity, or can it be altered?
Prof. Michael Howe, reader in human cognition at Exeter University, in an article entitled ‘Can IQ change?’ says, ‘A number of prominent authorities on intelligence insist that an individual’s IQ is highly stable and resists efforts to alter it. For instance, Murray (1996) states that with existing interventions IQ can only be raised “in modest amounts, inconsistently, and usually temporarily”. Apparently, this is because “an individual’s realised intelligence, no matter whether through genes or the environment, is not very malleable”’. (Murray, 1996)
Similarly, Rushton (1995) believes that ‘intelligence is the trait with the strongest stability over time’. Consequently, it is argued, attempts to raise intelligence have been characterized by “high hopes, flamboyant claims, and disappointing results.’” (Herrnstein & Murray, 1996)
Howe, however, says that, ‘the assertion that IQ is largely unchangeable is firmly contradicted by empirical findings from a number of sources’ and his conclusion states:
‘There is massive evidence that IQ is far from being immutable. The objections that have been raised in relation to that evidence are not at all convincing. There are no clear reasons for insisting that it is qualitatively more difficult to change the mental capacities that determine a person’s score at an IQ test than it is to alter those mental capabilities that are acknowledged to be acquired as a result of a person’s experiences. The empirical findings provide no support for the pessimistic conclusion that low intelligence and the problems associated with it are inevitable and unalterable.’ (Howe, 1998)
Doman puts it more succinctly:
‘The world has regarded brain growth and development as if it were predetermined and unalterable. Instead, brain growth and development is a dynamic and ever-changing process. It is a process that can be stopped (as it is by severe brain injury). This is a process that can be slowed (as it is by moderate brain injury), but, most significantly, it is a process that can be speeded (and were it not so, the far-behind brain-injured child could never catch up).’
(That last statement, about the brain-injured child catching up needs some clarification. Doman’s work with brain-injured children, although not as well known as it should be, nevertheless has two clinics in this country following his teachings, the British Institute for Brain-injured Children – BIBIC – and the Kerland Foundation, both of Bridgwater.)
Doman justifies his statement:
‘The final sentence is proven by the severely brain-injured child (neurological age 2 months – chronological age 130 months) who now begins a program of neurological organization. A year later she has a neurological age of 26 months and a chronological age of 142 months. In one year of elapsed time she has grown two years’ worth. For her the process has speeded. (Doman, 1980)
Exceptional ability
Professor Michael Howe, of Exeter University, in 1991 was arguing for more research into factors that promote exceptional ability; ‘What there was,’ he said, ‘suggested it was learned behaviour, not the result of innate gifts.’
By April of this year, Prof. Howe had done that research and published it in his book (Genius explained). He says,
‘Genuine creative achievements depend more on perseverance over the long haul than on prodigious childhood gifts…even the most exceptionally able still took at least 10 years of hard study to become a major composer.
‘Virtually all geniuses also had a firm sense of purpose and a strong motivation to achieve. This was combined with a capacity to concentrate for long periods of time and to resist distractions – abilities particularly honed by scientists such as Isaac Newton, Darwin and Einstein. A third shared attribute of geniuses was the capacity to focus efforts towards specific goals. Many geniuses also benefited from a supportive home environment.
‘Absorbing the lessons of geniuses will not make everyone into a genius but numerous ordinary people can benefit from the insights that exploration of genius can reveal.’ (Guardian, April 15th 2000)
In a discussion in the Guardian of 22nd April 2000, Michael Howe and Ellen Winner, described as an ‘Authority on child rearing’, debate the issue ‘Can you learn to be a genius?’
Winner says, “Twin studies have shown that genetics account for some portion of an individual’s IQ. This means biology cannot be discounted…I would wager that there is indeed a genetic basis to genius, in the sense that geniuses are born with unusual abilities and perhaps also unusual temperaments.” She acknowledges, however, that, “Genes are not enough, though. Geniuses need to be born at the right historical time, and into an environment that allows their abilities to flourish.”
Michael Howe : “The qualities that set geniuses apart are acquired, not innate. There is no combination of genes that can create a genius.” Tellingly, however, he admits, “Of course, not everyone can be a genius…” Winner, not surprisingly, picks up on this, “If, as you say, innate gifts don’t explain the difference between prodigies and typical children, then the environment must be the cause. Yet you admit that most of us could not be geniuses. Why not? If it’s the environment, we could all, in principle, make out children into geniuses. This view is just as much a myth as the view that geniuses are magical.”
And yet, this is the very point that Fuller is making in the quote above. All children are born geniuses. Suzuki says that all ability is learned.
High expectations
Behind successful people stands a mother, father or carer who believed in them, had high expectations of them and encouraged them in everything they did.
Pressey (1955) studied the careers of musicians, scientists, and Olympic swimmers. He identified five common factors in the backgrounds of his subjects.
1. Excellent early opportunities for the ability to develop and encouragement from family and friends.
2. Superior early and continuing individual guidance and instruction.
3. The opportunity frequently and continually to practice and extend their special ability and to progress as they were able.
4. Close association with others in the field, which greatly fostered the abilities of all concerned.
5. Many opportunities for real accomplishment, within their possibilities but of increasing challenge; the precocious musician or athlete has had the stimulation of many and increasingly strong success experiences - and her world acclaimed these successes.
Bloom (1985) studied the development of 120 highly talented individuals...’The learner was almost always taught by a highly skilled mentor who held high expectations for performance. Practice and instruction were extremely time-consuming and demanded a considerable sacrifice. Rewards were infrequent but powerful, such as winning contests, public acclaim, and the acknowledgement of peers.’
“…my driving question was whether ‘exceptional children’ learned differently because they were exceptional or whether, as I suspected, they became exceptional because circumstances allowed them to learn differently. (Papert, 1993)
The research I carried out for this study had three different strands – although the method was very similar for each one.
I carried out a study earlier in this course, which showed that a nine-year-old child, with a reading age of six could be helped with the use of large flash cards. (The words were written in large red letters on A4 card, split lengthways.) His success had significant spin-offs with an increase in his self-esteem and in his improved behaviour. I wanted to follow this up with a study to see if this method, which had worked so well in a one to one situation, could be used with a group of children. If it did it could form a more efficient part of a programme of cognitive stimulation.
I also wanted to try out the method with an eight-year-old dyslexic child;
And finally, a young mother, who was searching around for the best way to help grow her child’s brain, wanted to use the method with her 2 years and 4 months old child.
Group setting
The original primary school I contacted let me down at the last moment with the result that the study did not last as long as I would have liked.
I eventually, with less than two weeks to go until the end of term, gained access to a reception class in a local primary school. The teacher was extremely helpful and a group of six children, all aged 5, were chosen to participate in my study. They were selected on the grounds that they were at risk of ‘reading failure’.
The children’s names, (not their real ones) were Briony, Leah, Andrew, Brian, John and Alan. Two girls and four boys.
I met the children and we had an introductory session. I told them to call me Paul and told them that they had been specially chosen for what I called my ‘Reading game’.
I told them that I would be showing them some words on cards and asked them what sort of words they liked – little words or big words? They all liked big words. I then asked them to suggest some ‘big words’ that we could use.
(See Appendix A for the initial list of words the children mentioned in our conversation )
When the word ‘book’ was mentioned, I asked the question, “Does anyone like reading books?” There was a general shaking of heads. “Not me!” “I don’t.” “Boring!” were some of the responses. And yet the children were happy to talk about words. Once they were in full flow, throwing out words we might use, they were difficult to stop!
I showed the list of words we had chosen to the reception class teacher, who told me that she didn’t think any of the children would be able to read any of the words – “Maybe ‘van’”, she said, “We did ‘v’ today.”
It was agreed that I would come in at nine each morning, during the ‘Literacy hour’. The group would gather in a corner of the room away from the main group. Once I was ready I would flash the cards at the children, as quickly as possible. We would have a short discussion about either those words or about what was happening in the literacy hour that morning. I would then flash the cards again and they would rejoin the rest of the class. I joined in with the class for the next 15 to 20 minutes when my group would gather again, and we would repeat what we did earlier. Each session lasted less than 5 minutes. Each morning the cards were flashed 4 times.
On the fifth day, the Monday before the Easter holidays, Briony and John were sick and didn’t come to school again before the holiday. So they took no further part in the study.
Result
The intention behind this research was purely to discover if this method worked as well in a group situation as it did in a one-to-one situation. If it did it could form a more efficient part of a programme of cognitive stimulation.
There were some slight ethical considerations:
The children were separated off into a discrete group and treated differently from the rest of the class. However, they were made to feel special and that they were helping me in a task. It’s a fact of life in a primary school that children are taken out of class frequently, either singly or in groups, so they are used to this – and, in fact, this group weren’t taken out of the room, but only to a corner of it.
In all, the 4 children were exposed to 40 words, 20 of them for the full 16 times. Each day a new set was introduced; each day after the fourth a set was withdrawn, so that no more than 4 sets were shown on each day.
Glenn Doman, whose work this study was adapted from, says “Trust the children”. He maintains that testing children is like asking for payment for what you have been showing them. He advocates, if you must try and find out what the child has learned, showing the child two cards and asking them, for instance, “Which says mummy?” If the child looks like pointing to the wrong one, you simply push the card showing ‘mummy’ forwards and say, “This says mummy, doesn’t it?” His intention is to eliminate any possibility of failure by the child.
Obviously, I couldn’t use this method, but I still needed to know if anything I’d been doing had had any effect.
I took the children, one at a time, and turned over the cards one by one, asking them to tell me if they recognised any of the words. The first three children I tested, Leah, Alan and Brian went through the entire 40 words and did not recognise a single one!
I then repeated the process with Andrew, who was able to recognise 12 out of the first 20 words. He also knew 1 from the 5th set (which he’d seen a total of 12 times) and 1 from the 6th set, (which he’d seen 8 times). A total of 14 words in all.
From day 1 – tractor, van, motorbike
From day 2 – elephant, alligator, dinosaur
From day 3 – picture, Buzz Lightyear, Woody
From day 4 – castle, giants
From day 5 – video
From day 6 – motorboat
I have to say these results were inconclusive. The fact that one participant was able to recognise 60% of the words he had been exposed to the most, while the other three participants recognised none is a puzzle to which I have no answers.
I can only speculate on possible reasons for this discrepancy. It might be that Andrew was the only one to pay attention to what was actually going on. He certainly didn’t contribute any more words than the others did, so that he felt more ownership of them.
The environment could have been a contributory factor – the main group was busy and sometimes quite noisy whilst we were active. It might have been better if I could have taken the children into a separate room.
I have to consider the possibility that my anxieties about the study were perceived by the children, although I tried to be as relaxed as possible.
None of this explains, however, why it worked for one of the children and not for the others. There are many imponderables that can only be settled by a repeat of this study – over a longer period. Perhaps something for an MEd course?
The dyslexic child
The second study, with an eight-year-old dyslexic child, also took place over two weeks and it is still ongoing.
Colin is a well-motivated child who was diagnosed with dyslexia in his second year at primary school. His mother and father and elder brother all suffer from dyslexia and the mother is keen to try anything that will help Colin avoid some of the problems that she faced in her childhood.
I went over the procedure with the mother with Colin in attendance; he was very interested. Once again, the intention was to flash 5 cards on the first day, 10 on the second day and build up as before. However, Colin was totally confused by the extra cards on the second day, so his mother went back to 5 cards, three times a day.
At the end of the sixth day Colin was able to correctly identify 9 out of the 10 cards. He and his mother are quite delighted with Colin’s success, and they intend to carry on with the programme.
The young child
Nathan and his mother did the programme over a six week period, during which Nathan was quite ill for a period.
The mother reports that Nathan enjoys the words and is keen to continue. Once he recovered his health he has asked for a string of new words. (Doman’s ‘Rage to learn’?) The mother is now pregnant with her third child and does not feel up to carrying out the programme at the moment. However, when she feels better, she says will carry on as “Nathan seems to be getting so much out of it”.
(One of the key guidelines of the programme as set out by Doman is that the ‘Reading game’ must not be played if either parent or child is not feeling well. Far better to wait until both participants are feeling OK.)
The mother is reluctant to test Nathan, but reports that he is recognising some of the words in other contexts, so she feels that it is working.
(See Appendix B for Nathan’s diary.)
Taking these four studies as a whole (including the one from a previous assignment), it seems that there is some merit in continuing with large flash cards in situations both where there is some learning difficulty and in feeding a young infant’s ‘Rage to learn’.
It does seem as if the method works better when someone else, other than me delivers it! The one I was directly involved with was less than 25% successful, whereas two out of three that were delivered by others had a 96% and a 90% success rate!
‘Print is an optional accessory’
Diametrically opposed to Doman’s method is the Phoneme method espoused by Diane McGuinness in her book ‘Why children can’t read’. Steven Pinker, Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, MIT, writes in the foreword:
‘”Human beings have an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children; while no child has an instinctive tendency to bake, brew, or write.” More than a century ago, Darwin got it right. ...Children are wired for sound, but print is an optional accessory that must be painstakingly bolted on.’ (McGuinness, 1997)
I would agree that babies ‘have an instinctive tendency to speak’, providing they are exposed to spoken language! If they hear no language they will not begin to speak. By the same token, if they see no written language, they will never learn to read!
McGuinness is completely against Doman’s method of teaching reading, using flashcards:
“Children are unaware of phonemes in speech, and it is easier for them to become aware of syllables or whole words. If a child can only hear words or syllables, she won’t understand how to use our writing system. For this reason, no reading method should teach children to read whole words, syllables or syllable parts (word-families). These are the wrong sensory units for our writing system. ...Children must be trained from the start to become aware of the individual phonemes in speech. The earlier this is done the easier it will be for a child to learn to read. (Ibid.)
How this method fits in with the 80 or so percentage of children who learn to read with very little effort – including those who learned to read before they went to school, I am at a loss to explain!
In this study I have established that:
Developmental growth of the young brain depends of the amount of stimulation that the brain receives.
It is therefore beholden upon the parents/carers of the young child to ensure that the brain receives the optimum amount of stimulation to enable the full potential of the brain to be realised.
Once we as educators become aware of the importance of early development to lifelong learning we have a duty to inform others. Not to direct that they should carry out any programme of stimulation with their children – that is for them to decide. But they cannot make an informed decision without all the facts. And, I submit the facts are known – it is our duty to make them plain for all to see.
Knowing that stimulation is vital for early development, we should be offering compensatory stimulation to those children identified as suffering from environmental deprivation.
If we are serious about lifelong learning and its importance to our society we must begin to turn those children presently in statutory education on to education. As things stand at the moment, our system of education is simply increasing the pool of adults who want nothing more to do with education, which we then, some years later, try and entice back into some form of adult education.
To sum up:
Firstly, the brain grows on demand, in response to challenge or stimulation. During this period of growth, learning is as natural as breathing.
Secondly, whilst learning is at its optimum, it is also enjoyable and fun. And certain factors promote exceptional learning.
Thirdly, we should make our schools such attractive places to learn for all our children that they will be knocking the doors down to get in!
Fourthly, those children who have suffered environmental deprivation should be hot-housed in school.
On reflection…
This whole process has been an exercise in reflection for me. I have lived with the premise that underpins this study for 20 years or so, and I feel more passionate about early education as the years have gone by. And I am more concerned about the sheer waste of human resources – both because of the waste of human potential in neglecting the early years and of the disenchantment of many of our youngsters with the state of education as it is presently constituted.
When I began this degree course I did so out of a re-discovered love of learning. It was a follow-up to the Certificate of Education, which I undertook because I had enjoyed the City and Guild 7307 Teaching Adults course so much.
All this arose because I wanted to teach breadbaking and now I’m thinking of going on and doing an MEd! It’s a funny old world, eh? My first foray into education had yielded 2 ‘O’ levels from St Peter’s Secondary Modern School, Blackburn. I thought 2 ‘O’ levels and my degree would look well together!
But as this course has proceeded and I’ve contemplated more on my life, and how it has turned out, my attitude has changed. I now feel a degree of anger at the missed opportunity. How would my life have been different if I’d gained this degree in my youth? I realise now, that if I’d had a better education, I could have gone on to become a teacher, a researcher, or anything I put my mind to. My life chances would have been considerably enhanced.
Multiply my situation by the number of people who are similarly disadvantaged – and that adds up to an unimaginable waste of resources. And while we continue to ignore human potential and to extinguish children’s love of learning, it’s being added to every day!
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Finally, a word of thanks
I wish to place on record my thanks to my family, and especially my wife Teresa, for encouraging me throughout my second education – and for being so forgiving about the clutter and mess which I surround myself with as I put my assignments together.