March 3: Reflect on Your Research Topic for Debate
April 18, 2008 by chantellesthoughts
My Research Topic was the argument that dealt with whether Genetics was more influential or if Environment was more influential. I was on the con side which had to prove that genetics was more influential. Both sides had good arguments, and I feel that both enviornment and genetics are equally influential. http://genealogy.about.com/cs/geneticgenealogy/a/nature_nurture.htm
I feel that genetics are important for a few reasons. When a young child is growing up the environment isn’t affecting them as much. The parents influence the children the most at that young age. The parents teach the kids the ‘basics’ as they are growing up. As the child gets older the environment starts to affect them more and more. An environment can influence how a person reacts to certain situations, how they base their future decisions and sometimes even their beliefs. If you live in an environment with lots of violence you can influenced by either doing the violence or you are influenced by how you will react. You may be the person that does something about it, or you could be the one you sits back and hopes it doesn’t happen to you.
There are so many in ones environment/genetics that can influence them. Both play a large role that influence the person to become what they are as an adult, and continue to influence them as an adult.
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Chantelle,
This was a more difficult blog to comment on, since I was not apart of this topic and still don’t really understand the topic.. haha. I completely agree with.. “both sides had good arguments, and I feel that both enviornment and genetics are equally influential.” I feel that this would have been a difficult topic to argue, as were most of them. The link that you have posted as well shows your argument very well. I think you couldn’t have put anything else in this blog to make your point efficent.
Chantel.
Hey, Chantelle. I agree that both sides are incredibly influential. Before taking Biology, I would have said that environment is way more influential. I was shocked to discover that genes play such a huge part in our make-up. Our parents can practically design their children for heaven’s sake! I mean they can decide what color of hair, eyes, etc. their children have. They can also decided if their children are intelligent, athletic, musical, etc. I’d never realized that genes were such a huge part. I can imagine that this must have been an incredibly difficult topic to argue. I mean, there’s a lot of information concerning why environment is so important to a child. This shows in the forensic shows that are on TV now, like Criminal Minds or Bones, where profiling is so huge. The FBI can practically describe the unsub’s family life. However, it I’ve never seen quite as much information concerning the genetics. But the link you posted definitely helped. Good response!
Hey, Chantelle. You had some really good points. I do believe that genetics and environment both play a large role in shaping a person. In Biology, we talked about the importance of genetics. I never realized that there’s a gene that influences intelligence, music pitch, athleticism, hair color, eye color… You get the idea. In this way, it’s obvious that genetics are very important. However, I believe that just because the person has the gene for music pitch or the gene for intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean that they will end up doing that. It all depends upon what they like, and if their environment doesn’t allow them to experience music or school then it doesn’t really matter if they have the gene. They won’t get the chance to perform to their best abilities, or might not even want to! The article that you showed portrayed your argument quite well.