Nature Vs. Nurture Debate

4 Pages 889 Words

Are we prisoners to our genes or do we just conform to our environment? That is the major question behind the “nature vs. nurture” debate. Do we become human by our upbringing in society or are we naturally suppose to have the instincts born in us to develop to become human? That is the nature vs nurture debate. The debate of nurture says we develop from our environment, and it has cause to say so. For example, the orphans that were placed with women in a institution to be raised. Those orphans showed much higher IQ levels than the other orphans that were raised in the orphan home when they grew up. The ones that were placed with the women grew up to hold better jobs, and also receive better educations. There is also the example of the “wild children,” or isolated kids; like Victor, Genie, Isabelle, and Anna. Victor grew up in the forest and acted accordingly. He had no social skills and did not know how to communicate with other humans. His teacher had little success with conforming him to present day society. Anna and Isabelle were a little different. Anna made more progress, yet never fully recovered. Isabelle recovered fully from being 6 ½ years in isolation. Genie was also another girl that was isolated. Being closed from society for thirteen and a half years, she was intorduced to a learning environment and even though she received intensive training, she could maintain speech that was very primitive and messed up with her sentences. She eventually went to a home for adults at the age of twenty one. This either suggests that Genie was retarded at birth, or she was a clear example of the nurture debate.
Another exampl is the monkey experiment. The baby monkey was isolated at an early age and put in a room with two wire framed figures of monkeys. One was purely wire and had a milk bottle, while the other had no milk bottle, but was covered in a carpet substance - it was soft. Which does the monkey fin...