Intelligence Depends More on Genes than Environment

The last time I saw my eight-year-old niece, she asked if my three-year-old son was going to be “really smart.” She said her mother (my husband’s sister) had told her that my son’s intelligence was a given because of my husband and me. Everything’s relative, I explained to my niece, hard work is more important than anything else.

That’s what we’re brought up to believe. But what if Wim Vijverberg, professor of economics at Texas University, and Erik Plug, an economics researcher at Amsterdam University, are right? In a recent study of more than 15,000 children, 574 of them adopted, Vijverberg and Plug found that adopted children did less well in school; they concluded that income and home environment account for about 25% of educational attainment and inherited intelligence accounted for the remainder 75%.

This paragraph in The Sunday Times article infuriated me,

The research may lead some to question policies such as the child tax credit and education maintenance allowances, which are aimed at improving the performance of poor children at school and university. Such policies, it suggests, will work only if targeted at able children.

In my opinion, adopted children have probably experienced some other early disadvantages in life that affected their performance in school. And as a parent, the thought that some might try to distinguish the “able” from the rest so that they can get even more of life’s riches is unnerving. Where and when will the line be drawn?

I refuse to believe that my son or any other child has clear cut, pre-determined limitations. Even if my son won the genetic lottery (which is highly debatable), he will have to work if he’s going to succeed. No one’s doing him any favors telling him he’s naturally gifted and that it’s all he needs to make a difference in the world.

No matter your genetic endowment, you have to work to make the most of yourself. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not even scientists.