Nature vs Nurture Essay

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Nature vs Nurture Essay:

From the point of view of biogenetic concepts, the forms of social behavior are presented by special genes selected during evolution.

Renowned Austrian ethologist K. Lorenz considers the aggressive instinct in man among inherited from animal ancestors. To prove the innate cruelty, there are even special experiments on humans (for example, in the United States – S. Milgram, Germany – Max Planck). Mutation of ethics genes, according to the modern representatives of the biogenetic concept, leads supposedly to heartlessness (this explains the crime, vices, etc.)

However, such ideas are often a cover for those who are not willing or able to educate others and themselves: all deficiencies are written off by the reference to the “bad heredity,” against which man is powerless.

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In the past, based on the theory of heredity, there were even attempt to proclaim “natural” inequality in abilities of people of different races and nationalities. However, both the life and teaching experience, and modern science has conclusively proved that no matter what race or nationality a child may belong to, it can, under appropriate conditions, achieve a high level of development.

Psychological literature describes a French expedition, during which an abandoned little girl, which was later named Yvonne Marie, was found in the village, lost in the deep forests of Central America. She belonged to the tribe of Guayaquil – one of the most backward in the world. The girl was brought to Paris and sent into school. As a result, she has evolved into an intelligent and cultured woman. And other representatives of previously backward peoples successfully master the heights of human culture, proving the undeniable impact of psychosocial factors on intellectual development.

In the modern age and pedagogical psychology, there is another sociogenetic direction. Its origins come from the Middle Ages and arose in the theory of tabula rasa, according to which the human mind at birth is a “blank slate,” but under the influence of external conditions, as well as education, it gradually acquires all the mental qualities of the person. In XVIII century, French philosopher Helvetius was a representative of this trend, whose followers believed that all men are born equal in their natural abilities and the disparity between them in the field of mental abilities and moral qualities conditioned only by unequal external environmental conditions and different educational influences.

This, much more advanced concept, has been directed against the prevailing at the time ideas of the predetermination of the innate mental development and social inequality of people, but it has also been mistaken.

Students may use free nature vs nurture essay to understand that the major factor for mental development of the child is its adaptation to the social environment. The very same adaptation to the environment was understood mechanistically, in the spirit of the theory of equilibrium. The above biogenetic and sociogenetic theories of development, may seem opposed to each other, but this is only the external dissimilarity. In its essential characteristics in their views on children, they are similar. Both of them come from the mechanistic concept of development, regard man as the passive object of external influences, in one case, like a toy in the hands of heredity, the other – of the environment.