Dear Sue,
I am writing to comment on points raised by
Ruth Palatnik and
Jill O' Connor
in the September 2003 issue of Down Syndrome News and Update.
'Nature' versus 'nurture' is a controversial issue that
will not be resolved until a
large number of children has been brought up from birth
in the optimum conditions for maximum intellectual growth. This is a long way in
the future if only because we still have only limited ideas on what these 'optimum
conditions' are. Certainly no child, with or without Down syndrome, has yet been
brought up under these conditions.
When I say that my daughter Sarah was 'congenitally above
average' I am making a statement unsupported by any evidence except that her achievements
are above average – so that she may well have had a head start. However it is impossible
to separate the effects of Sarah's learning environment, since birth, from the effect
of her congenital ability. Elsewhere, I coined a phrase 'Individual Learning Time'
(ILT) and gave some quantitative estimates of the levels of the ILT that Sarah has
had from an early age – though not as early as I now wish – and to a limited extent
is still having. Most children, with or without Down syndrome, achieve nothing like
these levels of ILT. I believe that without this input Sarah would now be illiterate,
inarticulate, innumerate and physically inactive – whatever her congenital ability.
Leslie and Sarah Duffen
The word 'quantitative' in the last paragraph raises an
important point. In most human activity it is taken for granted that the degree
of success in that activity is directly proportional to the time spent in achieving
success. Only in education is this factor completely ignored - to the extent that
we simply do not know the extent of individual learning time in, for example, learning
to read or in any other learning. It certainly bears no relationship to class teaching
time.
Ruth asks for suggestions about the levels that children
can be expected to achieve at certain ages in - for example - reading. I do not
think that these can be divorced from the amount of ILT that the child has had and
is having, and the age at which he starts learning. Of course there will be a range
of achievement in our children, as in all children, but we simply do not yet know
what the upper level of that range of achievement is, in reading or anything else,
under optimum learning conditions.
Jill suspects that most people with Down syndrome are working
'proportionally nearer to their limits' than the rest of us. Well, maybe, but I
agree far more with her earlier suggestion that we don't really know the limits
of the potential of anyone, with or without Down syndrome, because our usual home
and school environments are far removed from the optimum for maximum growth. Every
year we can read of a six year old taking GCSEs, or some such. This probably happens
because his or her educational environment has been much nearer to the optimum than
usual. Asserting that such a child must have been born as a 'genius' is a rationalisation
of our failure radically to improve the educational environment for all our children.
The conventional part time, class teaching, school education is nowhere near the
optimum, even if it is started early enough.
Ruth suggests that parents can be discouraged if too much
is made of the 'high achievers'. Thirty five years ago I would have been immensely
heartened and encouraged to hear that there was even one person with Down syndrome
who was at any level of achievement. I can assure Ruth that it was very much more
discouraging to be given no hope at all than to be given too high a target to aim
at. High expectations must be better for any child, given the necessary action,
than aiming too low or not aiming at all. Parents can surely put up with some disappointment
in their children's achievements if they know that they have given all the time
that they can to help their children develop, using the best advice available to
them. No parent can do more.
Leslie Duffen
Parent, Devon, UK