Genetics, epigenetics – but what else?

Dominic Cummings, the Secretary of State for Education's special adviser, apparently thinks that a child's genetic inheritance matters more than just about anything else, including schools.

Now at a superficial level, this is clearly correct – I look like my parents and my children look like me. But this is, literally (the right word for once!), superficial – children who look different have the same potential and capacity. Just for example, children from India, from China and the UK all learn spoken language at about the same age and with the same facility. If we judge by the way people look, or if we simply say that genetics matters a lot, then we are on a slippery slope of determinism – “children like this can't do that” – leading to all the idiocy of selective education (I was judged at age 11 not to be bright enough to be a professional, but clever enough to be a member of the NCO/foreman class – so I went to a “Technical and Modern” school).

At the far end of this non-logic we have seen slavery and the Holocaust. So genetics is not the answer except in a very few cases where there is genetic damage or a specific genetic disposition for, say, high lung capacity.

Michael Gove, though, says he is persuaded by David Schenk (author of The Genius in All of Us) when he says, in essence, whatever your genetic background, you can learn to do anything, and your genes can be expressed in different ways. This is a more subtle approach and again is correct in rather limited ways. So, for example, identical twins who have specialised in either track running or weight lifting will look very different – and London cabbies have an enlarged area of the brain that deals with mapping.

But none of this gives a full picture. In terms of social and educational policy there are many developmental factors, mostly from conception through to age two, that impact on people throughout their lives. So, foetal alcohol syndrome impacts both upon gross physical development and on brain development in ways that cannot be put right later. And if a young child does not have parental conversational stimulus, language acquisition is seriously delayed and overall capacity is reduced. And sitting passively in front of a TV does not replace conversation!

So, while there are genetic and epigenetic factors, children's development is affected by a wide range of social, environmental or familial factors as well. That's why the very early years are so important – and why Sure Start was such a valuable contribution.

John Freeman CBE is a former director of children's services and is now a freelance consultant