industry & research
campusreview.com.au
The case for and against precision education
If DNA can predict intelligence,
should we teach students
according to their genetics?
By Loren Smith
P
ersonalised learning in schools is all
the Gonksi-fuelled rage, but what
if it meant more than individualised
learning plans and assessments?
What if it meant mapping curriculums to
students’ genomes?
This may sound like the plot of a sci-fi
film, but credible scientists are proposing it.
THE GENETICIST
Spearheading this movement is American
behavioural geneticist Professor Robert
Plomin. Now based at King's College
London, undertaking a long-term study of
13,000 twins pairs, he calls this concept
‘precision education’.
Genetics is responsible for 60 per cent
of the differences in learning ability, and
the specific DNA for about a quarter of that
proportion has been identified.
18
By contrast, Plomin says classroom
size, for example, accounts for “less than
1 per cent” of learning ability. Learning
ability, in turn, significantly predicts
school achievement. Yet our current
education system doesn’t take any of this
into account.
Although Plomin admits precision
education is a long way from being realised,
he says because the studies that found the
DNA differences were only conducted in
the last three years, we are getting closer
and closer to the possibility.
“The idea is that we’ll eventually be able
to find the DNA differences that account for
all 60 per cent of the [genetic] differences,”
he says.
Likening precision education to a
“tsunami”, Plomin says that when it arrives,
it will fundamentally change how education
is delivered.
Plomin sought to assuage fears that
precision education would be used in a
eugenics sense – that is, to make the smart
smarter. In fact, he thinks it should be used
to help the more needy.
For instance, if a child possesses DNA
that determines they will have difficulty
learning to read, which is detectable from
birth (as DNA doesn’t change throughout
one’s life), specialists can intervene early
to prevent that child from struggling
at school.
This, he says, is preferable to trying to
treat the reading difficulty after it’s apparent.
“It’s hard to put Humpty Dumpty back
together again after he falls off the wall.”
Neonatal ADHD detection could be
another use for precision education. Plomin
says this would avoid the drugging of youth
for ‘ADHD’ without biological cause.
However, he admits that precision
education’s use will ultimately be predicated
on people’s values.
“Educationalists are more concerned with
the Finnish model. That is, bringing all kids
up to some minimal level of literacy and
numeracy so that they can participate in
society. I think that’s what will happen first.
But, of course, parents who have talented
and gifted children are always saying, ‘What
about us?’”