increase their intelligence
There have been raging debates over whether a person’s Intelligence is hereditary or a result of the environment. Intelligence is simply a person’s general mental ability. The hereditists contend that a person is born with his or her intelligence and it is inherited from the parents. This school of thought attributes intelligence differentials across different sections of people to a linear correlation between parents and their offspring i.e. if a person’s parent is intellectually weak, that person will also be intellectually weak thus, efforts to increase the intelligence such a person are insignificant. Hereditary intelligence apologists also base their arguments on general gender and racial intelligence differentials. They argue that generally, males are more intelligent than women and that; whites are generally more intelligent than blacks.
The other side of the intelligence debate is the argument that a person’s intelligence is concomitant with his environment. The proponents of this theory, especially social scientists use it to advance the cause for social and economic equality among communities and races. They contend that people from poor economic and social backgrounds are less intelligent in comparison with their wealthy counterparts.
There is glaringly a gem with a person’s intelligence. In the social sciences quotas, intelligence accounts for academic and economic success of individuals and the more one is intelligent, the more one will achieve. The environmental account of intelligence includes but not restricted to; fetal environment, social, economic and political environment. The fetal environment, they argue are the conditions a fetus is subjected to and according to environmental theory, is responsible for the degree of a person’s intelligence. The economic, social, political environments are the corporeal conditions a person faces on earth that can have a bearing on his or her level of intelligence.
The major question here is whether intelligence is by nature or nurture. If it is by nature, a person can be intelligent irrespective of the fetal, social, economic or political environments. If on the other hand it is nurtured, the nature debate is of not essence at all.
To address this question, one has to ponder about this: are people born more intelligent or less intelligent than others? The answer to this could yes; every one is born with a measure of intelligence different from another since children have variations in abilities to learn and understand. Two children of the same age subjected to the same fetal, economic, social conditions can not have the same level of understanding. Twins can not for example learn to say “daddy” or “mummy” at the same time, though they are exposed to the same conditions of existence. In this case, the intelligence differentials in babies can not be explained by appealing to the fetal or social environments the babies are exposed to because they are the same. This argument leans towards the nature argument because the intelligence variations in twins can only be explained by the variations in genetic factors inherent in these babies.
I said earlier that every individual is born with a certain measure of intelligence but that measure develops and grows as each person also grows at a certain rate and to a certain limit. Therefore, it is possible for a person with a comparatively low level of intelligence to attain comparatively attain a higher level of intelligence and at a higher rate. At this stage, environmental exposures play a role. Therefore, a higher measure of intelligence at birth does not robotically translate into a higher level of intelligence on maturity.
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