People Learn Think That All

¶ … people learn think that all human beings are born neutral, overall. I do not believe that a child can be born 'bad,' but I do also think that everyone is born with the essential part of their personality and temperament already there, and that some people might become 'bad' more easily than others will, based on what their temperament is like and what happens in their environment as they are growing up. Most people turn out to be 'good' however, which supports the theory that people are generally born neutral and become a product of their environment, for the most part. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule.

Heredity also seems to affect human development and learning. The genetics that belong to a particular family relate to how others in their family will adapt to various ideas, and also to some extent affect diseases and conditions that a person might acquire. In addition to this, however, the learning and development of a person is affected by heredity because the IQ, reasoning ability, and comprehension of a child are generally close to that of his or her parents, baring any obvious reasons why it would not be such as mental retardation or birth defects. Those that have high IQs and strong personal development also tend to have a lot of reading materials around their homes and emphasize to their children the importance of reading, learning, and obtaining good grades throughout school, which helps with the strong development that is generally seen in these children.

While heredity is important, environment, culture, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and other factors also affect how a child learns and develops. Those children that come from another culture often struggle with English, and children that have parents with very low socioeconomic status often have more problems with learning because they are not generally exposed to many books and other learning materials. When it comes to ethnicity, minorities do not seem to do as well in school as a generalization, and this is related to their socioeconomic status, their home environment, and their culture, which often does not seem to put as much emphasis on learning and education as the non-minority culture does. In short, both heredity and environment work together to mold a child and make him or her into who he or she will be as an adult, so it is important that the environment be as strong as possible, in order to combat any problems that might be in the heredity, or to make already good heredity even stronger.

Society as a whole works to determine what a child should learn, based on what individuals have been learning in the past. However, time and technology change, and the different ideas that come with this mean that the curriculum is adjusted, almost on a yearly basis, to what the school districts and school boards feel that a child should learn. While society still has some input, it is mostly the school system that determines what should be taught, and what works and what does not, when it comes to the teaching of children. Generally, the school system appears to try to teach children what they need to know for their age group, based on what developmental psychologists indicate children of that age should be able to grasp. There is no point in trying to teach a child something that the child is not yet old enough to comprehend, and there is also no point in waiting until a child is already involved with something before teaching him or her about it, such as teaching children about substance abuse and sexual activity, which are both serious issues in schools today.

Learning itself generally defies description, as there are so many ways to define it. However, I think that learning is the acquiring of knowledge that one did not have before, that is important for any reason, and that will benefit someone during their lifetime. It does not really matter how that knowledge is acquired, overall, as long as the knowledge is 'learned' before the issue learned about harms the one that is learning. Learning comes from a combination of emotional effects, associations that a child makes between one thing and something else, the conditioning that an individual goes through, and the various cognitive processes that take place as a child is learning and growing.

As for who should be responsible in the teaching and learning of children, this depends on the age of the child. When children are in infancy, the parents and family are generally responsible for what they learn. As they get a little bit older, children attend Pre-K programs, Kindergarten, and then elementary school. While they are in the school environment, the teachers and other staff members are responsible for the learning that takes place, but the parents are still responsible at home. The same is generally true throughout the school careers of these children. When they got to early adulthood, however, they are out of school, and unless they attend college, they are much more responsible for what they learn than others are. In other words, they are 'grown up' at that point, and they are able to do as they please.