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The genius in all of us: why everything you’ve been told about genetics, talent and intelligence is wrong

David Shenk writes engagingly and compellingly to dispel the myth of genetic determinism in human achievement. He argues that attempts to quantify the separate contributions of genes and environment (nature versus nurture) are meaningless and unhelpful. The significant formula is G E (genetics times environment). Genes only act through the environment, and the environment controls the expression of genes in ways that research is showing to be far more complicated than simple Mendelian genetics would suggest. Human achievement results from manipulation and control of genetic expression, and for nearly every human being this potential is largely unexplored. However, this message is unwelcome; Shenk reminds us that a belief in inborn gifts and limits is much gentler on the psyche. Binet, inventor of the original IQ test, wrote in 1909, ‘(Some) assert that an individual’s intelligence is a fixed quantity which cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism.’ Both child prodigies and adult geniuses emerge from lengthy, intensive and relentless practice. Everyone is born with differences, and some with unique advantages for certain tasks. But no-one is genetically designed for greatness and few are biologically restricted from attaining it. Chess masters have no superiority in visual memory or calculation skills, only enhanced skill in seeing chess patterns developed over thousands of hours of practice. Mozart’s and Beethoven’s childhoods involved total musical immersion by ambitious fathers. Baseball legend Ted Williams’ ‘natural ability’ was, in his own words, purely ‘practice, practice, practice’. ‘It’s not that I’m so smart,’ Albert Einstein once said, ‘It’s just that I stay with problems longer.’ Neural plasticity allows practice to change the human brain. The hippocampus grows in London taxi drivers as they acquire ‘The Knowledge’, their detailed memory of the map of London. Shenk usefully critiques monozygotic twin studies, often used as evidence of genetic determinism. Even twins separated at birth have shared nine months of environmental influence; many twins used in studies actually shared more environment than is admitted; and minor similarities are given greater weight than significant differences. Child prodigies and superlative adult achievers are often not the same people. Child prodigies can be created by ‘hot-housing’, but an additional skill set is needed to produce adult achievement. Parents, teachers and students need to take the long and incremental view. If you want to be a high achiever: find your motivation, court and use challenge and failure for selfimprovement; be your own toughest critic; reject bitterness and blame; identify your own limitations – and then ignore them; delay gratification and resist contentedness; have heroes; find a mentor. Encourage children to become eventual high achievers by: believing in them; supporting, not smothering; pacing and persisting (model self-control and give children practice); embrace failure (do not allow easy success). Schools should see failure as a learning opportunity, rather than a revelation of students’ innate limits. Shenk ventures into epigenetics and its significance for G E. Controversially, evidence is presented that environmental effects on histones, which control gene expression, are transferred for several generations. The reader is introduced to ‘shorthand abstractions’ (SHAs) (Shenk’s term) which are abstractions with particular analytic significance, such as ‘natural selection’, ‘placebo’ and ‘random sample’. The SHA G E should challenge our thinking about education. This book has wide audience appeal, in both the main text and the source notes. Parents will be encouraged in stimulating their children’s development. Teachers will find challenge to preconceptions about children’s innate ability and the ethics of selective gifted and talented programmes. It would make a good extension reader for sixth formers, and is one of those useful books which would engage boys’ interest.