All the teachers have already made the observation: from the small section of kindergarten, the pupils arrive at school very unequally. Some arrive with a rich vocabulary and make elaborate sentences, others barely speak. Some interact easily with adults and peers, others are shy and introverted. How can these individual differences be explained?
Among teachers, as in society in general, it is fashionable to turn one’s gaze to a single set of causes: the family and social environment. Whatever the difficulties of a child, everyone loves to speculate on the causes: the disadvantaged socio-cultural environment, the parents who do not speak French, the trauma of divorce, the bad influence of the big brother, the diabolical screens , anything goes. What often goes unnoticed is the fact that another child of the same sibling does not have the same academic difficulties or the same temperament, even though he has the same social background, the same parents, the same older brother, he went through the same divorce and has access to the same screens.
In fact, any parent who has had at least two children has seen this: each child follows a unique trajectory, develops his own personality, his particular cognitive profile and the resulting academic skills, without any difference in treatment or environment cannot explain the observable differences between children of the same sibling.
Thus, any parent and any teacher can intuitively acquire the idea that all children are different, and that behind these differences there is a part that cannot be reduced to any identifiable family, social or pedagogical factor. In other words: that these differences are partly of genetic origin. Of course, these are only intuitions which may be wrong, and it is the object of all the scientific research carried out for a century to test these intuitions and to provide conclusive results allowing them to be accepted or reject them.
“Right Science”
Note that many people resist this intuition with all their might, because they have been told that the idea of genetic influences on our psychology is detestable, that it would promote a reductionist understanding of the human, a deterministic vision individual differences, and a “naturalization of social inequalities”, that it would be a “right-wing science” or even an extreme-right one, which would inevitably lead us towards eugenics and the “brave new world”.
One of the great merits of The genetic lottery (The arenas), book by researcher Kathryn Paige Harden, is to show clearly that all these platitudes are unfounded. Never dodging the historical intertwining of behavioral genetics with racism and eugenics, nor the countless attempts to co-opt its results by far-right ideologues, Paige Harden lucidly explains what this discipline really says (rather than what some make him say), and what his real implications are (rather than its fantasized implications).
Paige Harden provides a vivid illustration of the fact that science has no political color: it says what is, not what to do. The author shows that a better scientific understanding of the causes of our differences can be put as easily at the service of policies to reduce inequalities as at the service of discrimination, stigmatization and social Darwinism. Better still, it opens up the possibility of more effective policies, since they take into account all the causes of inequalities, and not just the social causes.
After all, decades of rejection of genetic differences and exclusive focus on “social reproduction” have inspired policies to reduce inequalities (school or social) that do not particularly shine in their effectiveness. Could it be that a more complete, more complex vision of all the factors that determine the human being, makes it possible to do better? We can at least hope so, even if no results are guaranteed. At the same time, is it reasonable to continue to bet on ignorance, deliberately concealing an important part of the factors which are at the origin of our differences?
DNA tests?
In practice, does this mean that DNA tests will soon be introduced into families and schools? Some, like Kathryn Asbury and Robert Plomin, say so, and evoke two possible applications: on the one hand, the genetic screening of students who would be at risk of developing learning disabilities (for example dyslexia), even before the first symptoms of these disorders appear , which would make it possible to offer them early prevention programs, presumed to be more effective than remediation once the disorder has declared itself. On the other hand, genetic tests could make it possible to predict (to a certain extent) the particular predispositions of pupils for such and such a subject, and thus would open up the possibility of offering them from an early age a school program optimizing the development of their special talents.
Personally, none of these proposals convinces me. First of all, one does not have to be obsessed with optimizing the cognitive and academic potential of one’s offspring, to the point of wanting to entirely shape one’s postnatal environment for this purpose. But even if that were the case, the promises of genetic testing would still have to be kept. But they are far from it. From the point of view of feasibility, even if the predictive power of genetic analyzes increases day by day with the increase in research, the predictions that can be made for an individual come with such margins of error that they are in pointless practice to make individual decisions. From the point of view of the expected benefit, the argument of precocity may seem convincing (the genome can be tested from birth), but in practice it is far from established that intervening from birth to prevent a disorder or to developing specific abilities is better than waiting a few more years.
If we want to know whether a child has a predisposition for maths or for music, we just have to give him the opportunity, in kindergarten for example, to encounter these different subjects, to observe his first interactions with them and the abilities he demonstrates. If your offspring has the seed of Mozart or Gauss, it will be seen quickly. Even if you consider it important to intensively develop these predispositions, having information of the same nature but much less precise from birth would offer little additional interest.
Likewise, it is indisputable that prevention is better than cure, and that early interventions to prevent developmental disabilities are more effective than late interventions. But we already know the warning signs of most disorders. We know, for example, that children who have a language delay, poor vocabulary, or difficulty in rhyming or remembering nursery rhymes are more at risk than others of becoming dyslexic. These observations can be made from the age of 3 or 4, at an age when it is established that we can intervene in a relevant way to support the child’s language skills and thus prevent the risk of reading difficulty. A genetic test at birth would provide much less reliable information, for a higher price, without providing the means to intervene more effectively.
No determinism
What these examples illustrate is that a genetic predisposition is not fate set in stone. It is just a predisposition, that is, a probability of a certain becoming. It may or may not happen because of countless other factors that go into a child’s development. Compared to observing the behavior and testing the abilities of a school-aged child, reading the genome at birth can only offer an extremely impoverished and imprecise view of a child’s possible future.
But then, what is the point of informing teachers that their students have genetic predispositions, in addition to the well-known social determinisms? Is such information not likely to have undesirable consequences, such as “naturalizing educational inequalities” and disempowering teachers for the success of their students?
Firstly, the researcher that I am, involved in the dissemination of scientific knowledge, finds it problematic to knowingly misinform the population, to promote a false or incomplete vision of human beings, under the pretext that this false vision would serve a good cause, that it would have more beneficial social consequences than a fair and complete vision. I find it hard to convince myself that scientific ignorance can be beneficial (especially among teachers), and a policy advocating disinformation “for the good cause” does not inspire me with any confidence.
Second, teachers often already have a fairly deterministic view of their students. Making room for genetic (rather than exclusively social) factors within this vision does not make it more deterministic. Anyway, each individual at a given time is determined by all the factors (whether biological or social) that have influenced him since his conception. The important message to convey is that the factors that determine our future also include what is happening in the present. Whatever past factors have made the student what he is today, the teacher has the power, by acting in his present, to modify his future. This power is not unlimited: genetic predispositions, like the family and social environment, will continue to constrain the student’s future. But this constraint is not a determinism. The whole art of teaching is to intervene in the student’s present by playing within the constraints inherited from the past to offer him the best possible learning trajectory.
Thirdly, information on genetic predispositions has the merit of reinforcing attention to individual differences between pupils, to the fact that they do not all have the same abilities or the same needs. This observation violates the very French dogma of the absolute equality of students, which often leads teachers to want to treat them all equally. But treating unequal pupils equally can only lead to preserving, or even accentuating, inequalities. Many students, due to learning disabilities or other difficulties, have special needs that require differentiated pedagogies. Offering the best possible learning trajectory to each student means finally taking individual differences between students seriously and drawing all the pedagogical consequences from them.
*Director of research at the CNRS and director of the “Cognitive development and pathology” team within the cognitive and psycholinguistic science laboratory of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris.