The Brain, the Environment, and You

For the first quarter Book Club activity, I involved myself in the group that read The Genius in All of Us: New Insights Into Genetics, Talent, and IQ by David Shenk. This book was very interesting. One of the very first things I noted about the book was the illustration on the cover: a man with his head tipped off like an ignited lighter. The illustration seemed to express the ideal of the ego for the human brain, and how the brain is "ignited" by knowledge and or intelligence. Aside from the illustration, one of Shenk's ideals in the book provided an interesting outlook on the development of the human brain: the environment and how it affects our intellectual development process.

The title The Genius in All of Us suggests the potential of a higher standard of intelligence for every single human being. Shenk takes into account how the environment serves as factors to how this development progresses. The "environment" we speak of isn't just the physicality of the surroundings, but also involves the status of the environment [in a modern sense, this includes examples such as the economy, varying relationships (parental influence in particular), etc). Simply, the setting surrounding the individual as a whole, reaching to even the smallest aspects of the environment. According to Shenk, and this makes sense on its own as well, states that when a child is growing up, the environmental factors the child endures causes them to change, developing their minds and physical self to adapt to support themselves. My question to this is, "If we planned to change/overhaul the entire educational environment we have now, what conditions would need to be met so that we, as developing human beings, achieve the highest learning standard possible? What changes to the environment will allow us to obtain" This question was just based off my own interest, if anyone was wondering.

Oh, and on the back of the book, New York Magazine quoted the book as "A thinking man's Outliers." So I am now probably going to check out Outliers myself.