The investigations which have been carried on agree that environment is
not so influential a cause for individual differences in intellect as is
near ancestry. One rather interesting line of evidence can be quoted as
an illustration. If individual differences in achievement are due
largely to lack of training or to poor training, then to give the same
amount and kind of training to all the individuals in a group should
reduce the differences. If such practice does not reduce the
differences, then it is not reasonable to suppose that the differences
were caused in the first place by differences in training. As a matter
of fact, equalizing training _increases_ the differences. The superior
man becomes more superior, the inferior is left further behind than
ever. A common occurrence in school administration bears out this
conclusion reached by experimental means. The child who skips a grade is
ready at the end of three years to skip again, and the child who fails a
grade is likely at the end of three years to fail again. Though
environment seems of little influence as compared with near ancestry in
determining intellectual ability _per se_, yet it has considerable
influence in determining the line along which this ability is to
manifest itself. The fact that between 1840-44, 9.4 per cent of the
college men went into teaching as a profession and 37.5 per cent into
the ministry, while between 1890-94, 25.4 per cent chose the former and
only 14 per cent the latter, can be accounted for only on the basis of
environmental influence of some kind.[16]
Another fact concerning the influence of environment is that it is very
much more effective in influencing morality than intellect. Morality is
the outcome of the proper direction of capacities and tendencies
possessed by the individual, and therefore is extremely susceptible to
environmental influences. We are all familiar with the differences in
moral standards of different social groups. One boy may become a bully
and another considerate of the rights of others, one learns to steal and
another to be honest, one to lie and another to be truthful, because of
the influence of their environments rather than on account of
differences in their original natures. We are beginning to recognize the
importance of environment in moral training in the provisions made to
protect children from immoral influences, in the opportunities afforded
for the right sort of recreation, and even in the removal of children
from the custody of their parents when the environment is extremely
unfavorable.
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