There is an age-old debate about whether nature (genetic endowment) or nurture (upbringing and education) has most influence over how we turn out as individuals. But in trying to make sense of how knowledge, beliefs and values are transmitted from one generation to another, the nature/nurture dualism has proved to be a conceptual cul-de-sac.

Thanks to work across a range of disciplines, a more sophisticated framework exists, which allows us to be clearer about how cultures are reproduced.

An individual’s set of knowledge, beliefs and values is acquired by transmission through a variety of means, direct and indirect.

The direct route includes genetically transmitted traits, but also the social influence of parents (bracketed together as “vertical” socialisation).

Indirect routes encompass schools (defined as “oblique” socialisation), but also peers and the media (“horizontal” socialisation).

On this view, the crucial difference is not between nature and nurture, but between direct and indirect influences.

Throughout human history, children have undergone direct socialisation by their parents, who define the cultural parameters, and set the “menu” of dispositions and values from which their offspring choose as they grow up.

Over time, though, indirect influences have increased.

Schooling could prove transformational

The collectivisation of education through formal schooling unleashed accelerated cultural change, insofar as delegating responsibility for socialisation to people and institutions other than parents opened the way for cultural encounters outside the ambit, and possibly the approval, of the immediate family. Schooling could prove transformational.

Research suggests that peer influence tends, perhaps unexpectedly, to reinforce the norms prevailing at home. Peer “policing” seems, for example, to contribute to the reproduction of bias in gender relations.

Social media’s potential to challenge prevailing cultural norms is also limited - there is plenty of evidence that the internet acts as an echo chamber, creating networks of individuals holding basically similar views, thus reinforcing existing prejudices and perspectives, rather than encouraging participants to explore alternative views, or submit their own to critical questioning.

So schools stand out among the agents of cultural transmission, direct and indirect, in inviting young people to submit their inherited and peer-reinforced values to scrutiny; adding to the cultural menu from which individuals can choose. In this sense, schools are disruptive of straightforward cultural transmission.

But as associate professor of education and human development at Brown University, Jin Li points out, this view of schooling is itself culturally-specific, and not shared by all societies.

She points to the existence of dramatically different perspectives on schooling between East Asia and the West. Both cultures value learning, and the outward form and content of their education systems are similar.

But the East Asian model links learning to the development of ‘virtue’ (sincerity, diligence, concentration, perseverance, endurance) and the perfection of the self; whereas Western perspectives centre learning around the cultivation of the mind in its apprehension of the world - privileging critical thinking, active engagement, self-expression and exploration.

Schools have a distinct role in the transmission of knowledge, beliefs and values. This role is neither inevitable nor invariant. We should cherish and preserve our schools as grit in the oyster of cultural transmission. 

Dr Kevin Stannard is the director of innovation and learning at the Girls’ Day School Trust. He tweets as @KevinStannard1

For more columns by Kevin, visit his back catalogue

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