Bring out two educational implications of heredity and environment citing suitable examples?
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Answer:
In this article we will discuss about the educational implications of heredity vs. environment.
1. Awareness of the Laws of Heredity:
Every educator or teacher must be fully acquainted with the processes and laws of heredity:
(i) He must know that every individual is born with certain in born traits. As these are innate, he cannot change these. There is a limit to the improvement that he can make in this regard, as is said, ‘thus far shalt thou go and no further.
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(ii) But although the inborn traits are there the child may or may not use his special talents. Much depends upon how he uses these. “The cards of life,” says Radhakrishnan, “are placed on the table. The success of the game depends more upon the players than upon the cards.” Nunn also emphasizes the same point when he says that the principal factor in the process of development is the child himself, and that he can make what use he will of his hereditary endowment and his educational opportunities.
(iii) Every child is gifted with some virtues and assets. Hence it is the duty of each teacher to get complete data about the inborn traits and virtues of each child. Many children get wrong guidance or no guidance because their talents were not discovered in time. Full many a flower both blossom unseen.
(iv) The teacher should not waste his time in teaching something to a child for which he is not at all endowed with capacity to learn. He will live in a fool’s paradise, if he endeavours to convert an idiot into a doctor or engineer. Every teacher should, therefore, have full picture of the intelligence, aptitude and personality traits of the child.
(v) The teacher must know the mechanism of heredity and influence of environment. He must know that man is born with instincts, and these instinctive urges can be modified. Instincts themselves are acquired characteristics. Modifications of instincts for our higher culture and civilization will prove of high dividends for future generations.
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(vi) The knowledge of the laws of similarity, variation and regression will help the teacher to solve some confronting problems. Out of ignorance he may say, child is extremely careless, because born of an intelligent father, his achievement in the class is low. Actually, child A may not be as intelligent as his father, vide law of regression. Two brothers of the same parentage are presumed by the teacher to have similar intelligence and consequently similar achievement. But according to law of variation, there are possibilities of the two brothers to be distinctly dissimilar.
2. Guidance and Heredity:
In order to provide psychological guidance to the maladjusted and problem child, he shall have to trace the heredity factors, the constitutional makeup of the child. Sometimes the children inherit mental abnormalities of the parents such as extreme sensitiveness, neurosis, impulsiveness, feeble-mindedness, criminal tendencies etc. No educational and vocational guidance is possible without having a full picture of the inborn traits and talents of the child.
3. Theory of Evolution and Education:
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was mis-interpreted by his followers, when they applied principles of (i) natural selection and (ii) survival of the fittest society. Thus survival of the fittest would lead us to think that only the developed nations deserved to exist and the underdeveloped countries should perish.
Answer:
The genetic composition (heredity) can impact problem solving, intellectual and analytical skills, where a number of decoding and aptitude gets passed on through generations. Coming to environment, the genes would be of no good without life experiences, books, teachers and a nurturing lifestyle.