I left class today evaluating my personal beliefs and stereotypes of children. When I completed reading The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker last week, I completely agreed with most of what he said. Children are not born with a blank slate in the heads, and we as a country have believed this for far too long. However, in class today, I as well as everyone else, blamed parents 100% for bad behaviors. The following sites have helped me shape my ideas of nature vs. nurture.
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/behavior.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture
http://www.parentcoachplan.com/misbehavior.php
I googled any combination of words I could think of to find varied information on children, behavior, parents, and genes. A large majority of the websites that came up for my searches related to how parents can become better parents, or how parents can fix their mistakes. This vividly proved that our society as a whole stresses the nurture arguement. With more research I found the articles above.
I understand the genitics behind the nature argument but respect that one's environment plays a large role in who children become. I personally like Donald Hebb's reply of what plays a larger role in behavior, "What is more important in a rectangle, its length or width?"
In my own words I would explain the factors leading to how people act this way: When babies are born they are given a code to live life by, not meerely a blank slate. As they grow and mature, they follow their given code of life. However, humans live life trying to avoid pain and maximize pleasure, so when a child recieves a positve reinforcement for a negative behavior he or she continues with that behavior simply for pleasure over pain. This explains how environment can paly a role. Some children may be more stubborn or maybe more extroverted because of hereditary, but the environment they are born into shapes these inate characteristics into something positive and useful or into something negative.
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Kate I too have to say that blaming the parnets was at at one point at fault, but after reading in class and what you have found to me no child born has a clean slate. When a child is born it has the genes and already to go.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your assessment, the only thing I'm a bit confused about is when you stated the environment shapes inate characteristics- because if charactersitcs are shaped they would not be inate, they would be behaviorally or environmentally learned; not instictual.
ReplyDeleteThat quote is interesting about the rectangle, I have always thought that the argument shouldn't be nature or nurture, rather how much is nature and how much is nurture. If infants were blank slates then they wouldn't do anything at all. In my opinion, there must be an initial cause, which starts with genes, and the effect depends on the environment. These two then combine to form the next cause and effect, and so on and so forth.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree it should be looking at what part is nature and what part is nurture, not which one is it. I believe they both work together. Although, the way a person is nurtured has a big affect on who they are, I still believe that we are not completely blank slates and we were given something to work with. The environment just took what we had and added to it and shaped it into what we are today.
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