A child's development is greatly influenced by both heredity and environment. Learning and behavioral tendencies are shaped by genetic factors and environmental conditions. Additionally, intelligence and character are significantly affected by the environment. Heredity and environment contribute to the differences in personalities among children. Mental growth is also closely linked to the interplay between heredity and environment.

Heredity: Meaning and Definition

Human beings share a common genetic structure, yet each individual carries a unique set of genetic traits inherited from their parents. These traits include eye color, hair color, body type, height, and skin color. Therefore, heredity can be defined as the transmission of genetic traits from parents to their offspring.

According to Peterson, heredity refers to the inheritance from one's ancestral lineage through parents, encompassing nature, character traits, appearance, intelligence, and cognitive skills.

Principle of Heredity

All traits are influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, interacting to produce their effects. This interaction means that the expression of genes is dependent on the environment in which they operate.

• Similarly, the environmental effects depend on the genetic framework they interact with. Heredity provides the foundation for the development of human personality.
• Heredity constitutes the genetic blueprint a person is born with, evident in characteristics such as height and certain habits.
• The environment encompasses all aspects of one's surroundings, including human and non-human elements such as parents, family, friends, school, neighborhood, workplace, and socio-economic conditions encountered since birth.
• These environmental factors significantly influence an individual's development. While a child's potential is determined by heredity, the extent to which this potential is realized depends on the environmental opportunities available.

Role of Heredity and Environment in Development

Two of the most critical factors influencing children's development are 'Heredity' and 'Environment'. Children primarily spend their time in preschool and at home with family and friends, making these factors pivotal in childhood development.

Heredity involves the transfer of traits from one generation to the next through chromosomes. Physical and mental (emotional) traits play significant roles in the overall personality inherited from parents.

Physical Traits

Examples of physical traits include height, body structure, body part shapes, and conditions like heart trouble, diabetes, baldness, and asthma.

Mental Traits

Mental and emotional traits encompass intelligence, memory power, interests, talents in areas like music, art, literature, and dancing, as well as behavioral traits like cruelty or being cool-headed.

Environment refers to all physical and social factors that influence a child's development, such as home environment, family dynamics, neighborhood, peers, school, teachers, political and religious influences, and broader societal factors.

• No individual remains the same at maturity as they were at birth. All these environmental components can significantly impact a person's health.
• Everything that influences a child beyond their inherited traits from parents constitutes their environment.
• Both heredity and environment equally contribute to the formation of human nature. However, in some cases, heredity plays a more significant role during preschool and at home.
• Conversely, there is evidence showing that environment plays a crucial role in shaping human nature in other cases. Therefore, as parents, we have the responsibility to utilize both factors to support our child's development.
• As pre-primary teachers, we may not control a child's heredity, but we can certainly control the environment to promote healthy development.

Laws of Heredity

Three important laws of heredity are:

1. Like Produces Like: According to this law, humans will produce human offspring, just as a cat will produce kittens.
2. Only Certain Traits are Transferred: Dominant traits are more likely to be passed on than recessive traits.
3. Convergence of Two Lives: Both parents equally contribute to passing on their traits to their offspring.

Effects of Heredity

Heredity plays a crucial role in the development of a child and affects various aspects:

1. On Physical Characteristics

• Physical characteristics refer to a child's appearance or physical features inherited through genes and chromosomes.
• Children typically resemble their parents in traits like height and physique due to biological heredity.
• Genes, sections of DNA containing coded instructions, largely influence child development, resulting in unique variations among individuals.

2. On Intelligence

• Specific genetic traits determine a child's intelligence and are linked to IQ levels of parents and siblings.
• Intelligent parents tend to have intelligent children, while dull parents may have children with lower intelligence.
• Mental abilities inherited by a child affect emotional development, which in turn influences social, moral, and linguistic skills.

3. On Character

• Character traits are inherited from parents and influence a child's development.
• Parents pass on moral values that influence the moral development of their offspring.

Significance of Heredity for Education

The importance of heredity for education is highlighted as follows:

• Foundation for Intellectual Potential: Heredity establishes the basis for a child's intellectual abilities, revealing their innate talents. Each child inherits different types of intelligences from their parents, such as analytical, creative, or practical intelligence.
• Identifying and Nurturing Talent: Parents and teachers should observe and identify a child's potential domains and then nurture and develop these areas accordingly.
• Maturation and Learning: Heredity influences maturation, affecting learning processes. Genetically directed changes, like the development of basic motor skills, are largely determined by inherited biological instructions.
• Personality and Temperament: Heredity plays a role in shaping personality traits and temperament. Children exhibit distinct temperaments from birth, influencing factors like activity level, adaptability, persistence, and learning ability.

Environment: Meaning & Definition

The environment encompasses all surroundings that affect living beings. It includes air, water, vegetation, mountains, plateaus, rivers, and other elements that collectively shape human life.

• Interacting with the Environment: Human beings interact more extensively with their environment compared to other living beings. The environment plays a crucial role in human development.
• Definition of Environment:

Various definitions of environment by different thinkers are:

• Ann Nastase: "Environment is the factor that affects a human being beyond their life."
• Holland and Douglas: "Environment refers to all external forces, influences, and conditions that affect the life, nature, behavior, growth, development, and maturity of living organisms."
• Gisbert: "Environment is anything immediately surrounding an object and exerting a direct influence on it."

Effects of Environment on Child Development

1. Physical Dissimilarities

• While physical attributes are primarily hereditary, environmental effects are evident. For example, people living in mountainous areas tend to be shorter in stature compared to those living in plains, who are generally taller and stronger.
• Generational observations show that changes in location can influence a person's physical structure.

2. Effect on Superiority of Races

• Intellectual superiority among races can be attributed more to environmental factors rather than heredity. Races with better intellectual, cultural, and social environments tend to perform better in tests.
• If a great leader's son grows up in an incompatible environment lacking intellectual and cultural atmosphere, he may not achieve greatness like his father.

3. Effect on Personality

• Personality development is more influenced by the environment than hereditary factors. Individuals can evolve positively if they are provided with a proper environment.
• Many examples exist where individuals born into low-income or poor families have risen due to a better environment that enabled them to utilize their capabilities fully.
• Newman, Freeman, and Holzinger studied 20 pairs of twins raised in different environments. They found considerable differences in personality traits between twins raised in rural vs urban environments.
• Children raised in urban environments were found to be more sophisticated, carefree, and intelligent compared to their rural-raised siblings.

4. Effect on Mental Growth

• Psychologist Gardon observed that the absence of a proper social and cultural atmosphere can hinder mental growth in human beings.
• He studied children living in riverine areas and found that their mental development was hampered due to their poor environment.

5. Environment’s Multiple Effects on Growing Children

• Environment plays a crucial role in the development of physical, mental, social, and emotional aspects of human beings.
• For example, a child reared in deep forests, among wild animals, exhibited physical and behavioral traits similar to animals. Efforts to educate and civilize him failed.