Implications for Educational Policy of Individual Differences in Learning Ability: A Comparative Perspective

Abstract

This chapter presents a comparative perspective implication for educational policy of individual differences in learning ability. The way individual differences are perceived and taken into account in organizing formal education in various national systems is, indeed, worthy of study from a comparative point of view. The way individual differences are perceived with regard to origin and size as well as the practices that ensue from these perceptions reflects differences between political ideologies closely related to social and economic orders that vary from country to country. Problems related to individual differences and their policy implications surfaced when society began to change from an ascriptive one, where everybody had to remain in the class or caste into which he was born, to a society of mobile social status, where status attainment increasingly depended on educational achievements. Problems of differentiation and uniformity of school provisions are products of the era of the liberal philosophy of equality of educational opportunity. The task of the educator is to bring about worthwhile changes in the behavior of individuals. Such changes are achieved by environmental and not by genetic means and are accessible to direct observation. As no links between specific genes and concrete cognitive behavior have been identified, the burden of proof as to how genetic factors act as restraints to educative efforts rests with the hereditarians and not with the environmentalists.