OPINION
Some children just turn out that way . . .
Just because study paid off for Mark Latham doesn't mean it will for
everyone. “Values for life — respect, honesty, perseverance, responsibility,
self-control.” “Treat others the way you want to be treated.” “Respect
each other's differences.” These were posters in a state primary school
I visited last year. (I wrote them down at the time.)
State schools these days are not so much politically correct, as John
Howard charges, as ideologically sound. So are most private schools, for
that matter. But it's an ideology to which — one would think! — not even
the Prime Minister could object. They are teaching sharing and caring and self-esteem (too much
self-esteem?) and co-operation and not bullying. Let us hope these
values stick. But if they don't, it is not necessarily the fault of the
school, or the parents.
Some people think the things Mark Latham has been saying are
dangerously right-wing. Indeed, that he is as right-wing as John Howard
in his promotion of values such as reward for effort and the importance
of the family. But what Latham and Howard have in common, it seems to me, is that
they are both firmly on the side of nurture in the nature versus nurture
debate. This means preferring the social environment over biology as an
explanation for human behaviour. Which, oddly, is a left-wing, liberal
sort of thing to be. What is “politically incorrect”, is to be a
biological determinist, because this implies people are simply born the
way they are and social policies won't help.
Latham wants a greater government role in helping families and more
support for public education, to give everyone as near to equal
opportunity as possible. He is also proposing penalties for parents who
don't take responsibility for their children's behaviour. Howard,
apparently, wants to make it easier for children of the elites to remain
that way, by supporting private education.
Latham's (and Howard's) idea that hard work will necessarily be
rewarded is unfair and wrong. I'm with Latham. But both appear to assume
that children are blank slates on which we only need to write the
future.
“Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man,”
famously said the Jesuits. Yet all the latest scientific evidence seems
to be: “Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you a child of
seven.”
New books — The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker, Nature via Nurture by
Matt Ridley are two — point out what every parent of more than one
knows: that children are born with different abilities and different
temperaments, and these predispose them to certain behaviours.
Most families demonstrate this. Of the seven children of my
Labor-voting, atheist, book-reading parents, two are now religious, two
vote conservative, and one has never, to my knowledge, read a book (but
his son is a voracious reader).
While my sisters were diligent students, I hated school so much I
sometimes wagged it, hiding in the back lane all day until I saw the
school bus go past and knew it was time to go home. I was almost one of
the “chronic truants” Latham talked about. This was my fault, not my
parents', and I'm thankful no one in those days thought of fining them
for it.
It's very nice that Mark Latham reads three books each night to his
little sons — at the very least they will have warm memories of being
read to — but whether they turn out to be readers themselves might just
as well depend on whether they inherit their father's or mother's genes
for reading or some genes for not-reading from their great-uncle Arthur.
There are comforts to be had in not putting all your faith in
nurture. It means parents who didn't read to their children — maybe
after working in a factory all day they were too tired — needn't feel
they have ruined their children's life chances. It means everyone who
was abused as a child needn't fear he will be an abusive parent. It
means nature may help us overcome nurture.
Latham's (and Howard's) idea that hard work will necessarily be
rewarded is unfair and wrong. Many people work hard all their lives and
never prosper. Just because study paid off for Mark Latham doesn't mean
it will for everyone.
How deterministic is it to assume that because you were brought up by
nice, middle-class parents and went to a school where you mixed with
children of the same background you will turn out a better product? What
does that say about all those not lucky enough to be brought up that
way?
Latham is right to want a more equal society. Severe economic
inequality is a predictor of violence (a better predictor than poverty
itself) presumably because young men deprived of legitimate means of
acquiring status compete for status on the street instead, notes Steven
Pinker.
But if you believe in a meritocracy, as Latham does, you had better
not put too much store on nurture, or you will end up giving all the top
jobs to those who went to the best schools. As Matt Ridley says:
“Egalitarians should emphasise nature; snobs should emphasise nurture.”
We are, in fact, a product of our genes and our environment
interacting with each other. But the discovery that more things are genetically determined than we
might have once liked to admit is not a licence for parents to treat
children badly. As the author of a study that found a gene in some boys
that gives a higher probability of criminal behaviour — but only when
combined with maltreatment as a child — said: “The findings have zero
application for social policy: we were against child abuse before and
we're against it now.”
We should strive for as good an environment as possible for all
children; because what matters is whether children are happy now, not
merely how they will “turn out” one day.
Getting into a new round of blaming may be politically popular but it
won't create better citizens.
By Pamela Bone
3 February 2004
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/28/1075088085960.html
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