While reading Steven Pinkers "The Blank Slate" the specific portion that struck a deep cord with me and my personal beliefs
is when he stated "Children are shaped not by their parents, but in part by their genes, in part by their culture and in large
part by sheer chance". I strongly disagree with the point made by Pinker. I do believe that children are shaped by how they
are raised, how they are treated and what they are taught is right or wrong. Yes, I do believe with his three points that
children are shaped by culture, yes I believe genes play a roll in how they will grow up and mature and yes I do agree that
certain events in ones life alters who they may become for example witnessing a horrible murder may alter a persons
mental state or may not. However I do not and would no ever agree that children are not shaped by their parents. I say this
due to personal examples of my own life that have made me challenge this argument. I have a friend who I will change her name for the sake of protecting her identity who was taken away from her mother and father when she was a day old due to the lack of sufficient care they could offer her, she was born with a rare blood disease requiring transfusions once a month. Her identical brother was born a healthy baby with no additional medical care needed to support him and as her parents were 21 and 18 they decided to keep him. Her identical brother was brought up in a rough area outside of Harlem New York, given an education at a private school but verbally abused by his father and mother regularly. My friend Sam* was brought up in a similar cultural environment as her brother, shared similar experiences but had never suffered from a form of verbal abuse. She now attends the University of Minnesota and is gaining her undergraduate degree in Psychology. Yes, you would hope her brother is doing wonderful things with his life as well... however sadly he is not. He now is in the state jail awaiting trial for domestic abuse called in by his mother. All the years of being brought up and suffering from abuse drove him to lash out on his parents on numerous occasions although their culture, genes and chance experiences were extremely similar (they both were chased by dogs, as this is one of Pinkers examples).
When comparing Pinkers ideas to "science wars" ( I hope I get this right as I recently enrolled in the course and missed the lecture and am relying on another students notes) he seems to believe that what we do and who we become is based primarily on genes. However I believe that it is based on the environment that an individual is brought up in as well as genes.
`````Side note- My computer is currently being a unreliable Mac right now as usual and I am typing this on my sisters Iphone so I apologize if it does not flow properly also it may have autocorrected
I found myself rereading the portion of Pinker's speech that you mention several times. I agree that parents can not be discounted to the extent that Pinker does so, but I hope that he would include most of what parents do under the community portion for which he allows in his list of what impacts kids. However my rationalization is not enough to let me really let what Pinker said about parenting stand. I would really like to be able to hear him expand or explain what he mean because it kind of throws of some of his other conclusions by association for me.
ReplyDeleteThis part of Pinker definitely struck me also. I don't have the personal connection like you do with your friend, but I have always believed that a large part of who I am is due to the way my parents rose me. I can agree with Pinker somewhat on how children are shaped by chance because I hear stories of the "trouble child" in the so-called "perfect" family, and wonder why there is that one child who doesn't seem to fit in quite right. But it could be because of one experience, like getting chased by a dog. It is scenarios like this that make me question nature vs. nurture and my belief that parenting has a larger effect on children.
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