Genes, Brains, and Human Potential The Science and Ideology of Intelligence

18 PINNING DOWN POTENTIAL

to be found in biological fatalism. But scientifi c meetings and seminars
with titles like “Th e Molecular Ge ne tic Architecture of Educational At-
tainment” are now springing up.
As I write, yet another study has appeared in Nature. With such a
handy methodology now available, there will no doubt be many more.
And, no doubt, associations will be seized on as the discovery of “genes
for education,” with far- reaching conclusions. Th e main conclusion is that
we can soon start identifying groups of children for special genet ically
informed treatment in schools.
Th is seems to be the position, for example, of Kathryn Asbury and
Robert Plomin, as reported in their book G Is for Genes. It conjures up
a startling vision, where the DNA of all our children will be available on
bio- data banks, from which we can read their true fates from a very early
age. In schools, they tell us that “the technology will soon be available...
to use DNA ‘chips’ to predict strengths and weaknesses for individual pu-
pils and to use this information to put personalized strategies in place for
them.” Each child, it seems, is to enter school with a ge ne tic barcode, to
which teachers will respond with tailored treatments, like an optician’s
prescription aft er an eye test.^19
Over two thousand years ago, Plato urged us in his Republic to
“ discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.” Today,
Asbury and Plomin claim to be on the verge of such discovery by identi-
fying children’s genes. Although fundamentally fl awed, as we shall see in
chapters 2 and 4, the idea nevertheless set politicians’ antennae twitch-
ing. Plomin was called to give evidence to the United Kingdom’s Parlia-
mentary Select Committee on Education in 2013. Th is has been followed
by several sole- interview TV programs on the BBC to discuss that vision
of gene- based education.
What also stands out is the self- confi dence of this new wave of ge ne tic
determinists. In one paper, for example, Ian Deary and colleagues re-
ported results that “unequivocally confi rm that a substantial proportion
of individual diff erences in human intelligence is due to ge ne tic varia-
tion.”^20 “Unequivocal” is a word rarely used in research reports, even in
the advanced sciences. Since Deary has already told us that there is no
“grown-up theory of intelligence diff erences,” we’re entitled to ask: What
exactly is being confi rmed?

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