Gisela Stuart, the MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, argues that schools should be judged not just on their examination results but also on whether they nurture an aptitude for the workplace.
Each pathway would share enough common emphasis on English, maths and science for pupils to transfer between them, should they have opted for the wrong kind of school, while being distinctive enough to nurture particular aptitudes and ambitions.
Simpson recognized and nurtured Brown's aptitude for the sport.
While in Oxford his aptitude for papyrology was nurtured by Peter Parsons.
It's important to nurture and encourage students who express an interest or aptitude in math and science before middle school – and then to continue to support them through college, Johnson says.
Yet the dichotomous way of thinking continues to bedevil discussion and is the basis of the recurrent dispute known as the nature-nurture controversy (heredity versus environment), which entails debate over whether behaviour, intelligence, aptitude, character, and so forth are products of genetics or of exposure to environmental factors (e.g., culture).
Talent needs to be identified and nurtured from a young age, and there need to be mechanisms in place to find aptitude at a grassroots level and make sure that it is developed.
In regular schools, students who exhibit high aptitude in science and math may pursue science and math electives and other opportunities to nurture science giftedness.
At issue, then, is not nature or nurture but how nurture becomes nature: the environment in which children play and grow can encourage a range of aptitudes or foreclose them.
As Peggy Orenstein wrote in an article about gender-based toy marketing last December for The New York Times, "At issue, then, is not nature or nurture but how nurture becomes nature: the environment in which children play and grow can encourage a range of aptitudes or foreclose them".
