In the Genius in All of Us David Shenk pushes the importance that our knowledge and intelligence comes from genes times environment. They both contribute to our ways of learning and helps develop us since we were young. Shenk stated that the environment shapes our perspective and take on life just as much as genes do. He uses examples of people in the story that grew up in different environments to distinguish differences that environment can affect someone. Shenk put a lot of emphasis on the genes*environment (gxe) idea in the book so it brought up some questions I had reading the book:
Will GxE affect us our whole lives or will it eventually wear off when we grow older?
What are ways that we can improve children's learning to be similar without changing their environments?
How much does the environment affect the learning of children?
Overall thoughts on Genes times Environment idea?
This book seems very interesting. I wonder if the author discusses what happens if your environment were to change. Would your mentality change, or if you would still have the same way of thinking that you did in the old environment, or at least have the same tendencies. Let me explain. If someone was born and grew up in a poor area, but then moves into a rich area when they are older, would they still have the same habits or way of thinking they did as when they lived in the poor area? Perhaps that person might change because their environment changed, but they might have stayed the same because of the impact the first environment. I could be totally wrong, but I just thought I'd share this with you.
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