Nature Vs. Nurture And Parenting Beliefs

Improved Essays
Margaret Wente’s Globe and Mail article on why grit is highly overrated are merely scientific, educational, and political. Wente discusses nature vs. nurture and parenting beliefs. The author in this article tries to convince the audiences that genetic factors are determine once success. The writer used appeal to logic strategy effectively to relate the child’s school achievement to his/her genetic background. However, her argument is severely weakened by her bias and post hoc fallacy The author begins her article by telling a small story about her failure to achieve her goal for being a ballet dancer. She correlates her failure to her lacking of genetic backgrounds that gives her the success although she has grit that might give her a …show more content…
As Prinsen states, appeal to logic “persuades readers by addressing them on a rational level is extremely effective” (Prinsen 2). The author tries to convince the audience that student heritable traits are the major factor that relates to success; once the appropriate environment is conveniently established. For example, Wente supports her notion by mentioning a statistical study done in UK on 2,321 twin pairs, at age of 16 to determine the various components that affect the life outcome. They found that educational achievement does not depend only on IQ but also it depends more on non-cognitive factors such as self-efficacy and motivation, curiosity, emotional intelligence which also are heritable (Par. 9). In addition, the writer persuades the audience that, the role of school is teaching the child the value of civility, citizenship, and kindness rather than making them smarter as this is genetically determined (Par. 14). Also she pointed that, almost every parent would agree schools should teach and promote the values to their students. However, based on the study that provided in the article, the schools are limited by this fact as it can not affect the child’s gene rather that teaching them some

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