Paedagogica Historica, 2014

Vol. 50, No. 6, 852860, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2014.948011

Nature, nurture and neuroscience: some future directions for

historians of education
Richard Aldrich*

Institute of Education, University of London, England

(Received 31 March 2014; accepted 24 June 2014)

Following a short introduction this article is divided into three main sections.
The rst provides denitions and brief histories of the nature-nurture debate and
of neuroscience. The second section shows how in recent decades neuroscientic
research has impacted on the debate with particular reference to our understand-
ing of human intelligence and IQ. The third section examines ndings from
futurology and transhumanism. The article concludes that current developments
in the neurosciences and in technology have rendered the traditional nature-
nurture debate obsolete and that historians of education have a duty to engage in
the shaping of possible, probable and preferable futures.
Keywords: nature-nurture debate; neuroscience; epigenetics; futurology;
transhumanism; nanotechnology

A previous and very preliminary article in this area had two main objectives: the
rst to bring recent developments in neuroscience to the attention of historians of
education; the second to examine how historians of education might contribute to
this eld.1 Three major conclusions were drawn. The rst was that recent technolog-
ical developments that enabled the working brain to be observed have substantial
implications for the provision and practice of education. The second argued that
historians of education could bring considerable perspectives to bear upon this new
situation by drawing on images of palimpsest and kluge2 to show that the human
brain has evolved over millions of years via natural selection, a few thousand years
as a result of education, and only a few decades since propelled by modern commu-
nications.3 Finally, I suggested that at the beginning of the twenty-rst century we
are at a turning point not only in the history of education, but also in the history of
the human brain. The internet and other screen-based devices are rapidly changing
the generation, nature and ownership of knowledge. By changing the way that we

*Email: r.aldrich@ioe.ac.uk
1
Richard Aldrich, Neuroscience, Education and the Evolution of the Human Brain, History
of Education 42, 3 (2013): 396410.
2
See Gary Marcus, Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind (London: Faber &
Faber, 2008). A palimpsest is an ancient manuscript that has been frequently written upon
but with the earlier writing erased. Kluge is an engineering term for a clumsy patchwork
device that is, however, effective.
3
Aldrich, Neuroscience, Education and the Evolution of the Human Brain, 409.
2014 Stichting Paedagogica Historica
 Paedagogica Historica 853

think, read and remember they are also rewiring our brains.4 The purpose of this
article is to respond to the editors kind invitation to develop these preliminary
thoughts with specic reference to nature and nurture and to the future directions of
history of education.
In this brief contribution to a special edition specically devoted to retro-
spectives and previews there is scant space and less need to justify the search
for future directions for the work of historians of education. Sufce it to say
that history is both the reality and the record (or rather a series of records) of
human and other events with particular reference to the dimension of time
past, present and future.

Denitions
Nature has been dened as a things or persons innate or essential qualities or
character; nurture as the process of bringing up or training (esp. children).5 The
longevity of discussions as to the relative importance of these two phenomena is not
in doubt. For example, Platos dialogue, the Meno, written in 380 BCE, begins by
posing the fundamental question: Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is
acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then
whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?.6
Skipping over time, one fascinating example from the thirteenth century places
the question rmly in a gendered context. Thus a French romance written in
rhyming couplets by Heldriss of Cornwall uses the terms nature and noreture
(nurture) when describing the upbringing of a girl named Silence. The introduc-
tion of a law forbidding inheritance by women causes Silences parents and later
guardians to raise her as a boy. As Silentius, she proceeds to excel both in virtue
and in such traditionally masculine pursuits as hunting, riding and wrestling.
Eventually her true identity is revealed as Silentia, but not before the two charac-
ters, Nature and Nurture, are introduced into the story to debate whether such
moral character and physical prowess are the products of her heredity, sex, or
education.7

4
See, for example, Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We
Think, Read and Remember (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010); Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan,
iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind (New York: Collins
Living, 2008); Richard Watson, Future Minds: How the Digital Age is Changing Our Minds,
Why This Matters, and What We Can Do About It (London: Nicholas Brealey, 2010).
5
The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 9th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 907, 935.
6
See Dominic Scott, Platos Meno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
7
Heldriss of Cornwall, Silence, trans. and ed. Sarah Roche-Mahdi (East Lansing, MI:
Colleagues Press Ltd, 1992). See also Philip Groff and Laura McRae, The Nature-Nurture
Debate in Thirteenth-Century France, (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American
Psychological Association, Chicago, August 1998), htpprints.yorku.ca/archive/00000014/00/
Silence.htm (accessed November 20, 2013). Shortage of space precludes a detailed examina-
tion of the gender dimensions of the nature-nurture debate. For recent research into the striking
differences that exist between the neural wiring of men and women see the study by Ragini
Verma and colleagues of the University of Pennsylvania reported in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Science, December 2, 2013, http://www.pnas.org/ (accessed December 4,
2013).
854 R. Aldrich

Neuroscience encompasses any or all of the sciences dealing with the structure
and function of the brain.8 Like the nature-nurture debate, the study of the brain
has a long history,9 as Norman Doidge has described:
For four hundred years mainstream medicine and science believed that brain
anatomy was xed. The common wisdom was that after childhood the brain changed
only when it began the long process of decline; that when brain cells failed to develop
properly, or were injured, or died, they could not be replaced.10
Doidge ascribed this belief in the unchanging brain to three factors: the concept of
the brain as a machine, and machines do not change and grow; the fact that brain-
damaged patients could so rarely make full recoveries; and to our inability to
observe the living brains microscopic activities.11 Nineteenth-century pioneers such
as Pierre Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke who respectively identied the areas of the
brain responsible for speech and the comprehension of language could do so only
by conducting post-mortems on brain damaged patients. In the twenty-rst century
positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) procedures make it possible to observe the living brain at work. The main
outcome of this technological revolution was to demonstrate that the human brain,
with its estimated 100 billion nerve cells, is incredibly receptive and adaptive. The
concept of neuroplasticity was born: far from being immutable after childhood, the
brain is eternally plastic, constantly reacting to experiences throughout life,12 and
even able to relocate functions following injury.13 The implications for education are
immense.14 Debates about the relative importance of nature and nurture have entered
a new era.15

8
The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 9th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 916. For an evalu-
ation of the explosion in neurosciences and pseudosciences, from neuroeconomics to neuro-
theology, see Nikolas Rose and Joelle M. Abi-Rached, Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and
the Management of the Mind (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013).
9
See, for example, Stanley Finger, Minds Behind the Brain: A History of the Pioneers and
Their Discoveries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) which begins with Ancient Egypt
and Greece.
10
Norman Doidge, The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the
Frontiers of Brain Science (New York: Viking Penguin, 2007), xiii.
11
Ibid., xiv (emphasis in original).
12
Barbara Strauch, The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain (London: Penguin, 2010).
13
Doidge, The Brain that Changes Itself, xv.
14
See, for example, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Uta Frith, The Learning Brain: Lessons for
Education (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005); James P. Byrnes, Minds, Brains, and Learning: Under-
standing the Psychological and Educational Relevance of Neuroscientic Research (New
York: Guilford Press, 2001); John G. Geake, The Brain at School: Educational Science in
the Classroom (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2009); Paul Howard-Jones, Introducing
Educational Research: Neuroscience, Education and the Brain, from Contexts to Practice
(London: Routledge, 2010); Frank McNeil, Learning with the Brain in Mind (London: Sage,
2009); Alistair Smith, The Brains Behind It: New Knowledge about the Brain and Learning
(Stafford: Network Educational Press, 2004); James E. Zull, From Brain to Mind: Using
Neuroscience to Guide Change in Education (Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2011).
15
See, for example, Evelyn Fox Keller, The Mirage of a Space between Nature and Nurture
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), and the monthly scientic journal Nature Neuroscience.
 Paedagogica Historica 855

In 2008 a panel of experts composed of neuroscientists, educationists and psy-

chologists proposed the creation of an independent academic discipline, to be called
Mind, Brain, and Education: The Science of Teaching and Learning.16 One of the
principal purposes of this approach is to enhance the professional credibility of
teachers by moving the science of teaching (pedagogy) from being a soft to a
hard science based not only on anecdotal but also on empirical evidence.17
Although one of its main advocates, Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, has warned against
the dangers of neuromyths and neurocures; MBE Science, as it is known, is a
highly signicant development. Indeed it has been suggested that Mind, Brain and
Education Science is the Rosetta Stone that educational researchers need to translate
their research data into their daily work whether in the lab or the classroom.18

Human intelligence
Over the last one hundred years and more, human intelligence has been a central
feature of the nature-nurture debate. There is a vast literature.19 The modern history
of intelligence testing which may be traced to Alfred Binets LEtude experimentale
de lintelligence (1903) and through the respective contributions of such psycholo-
gists as Stern, Terman and Weschler, is too well known to need reiterating here.20
Sufce it to say that one outcome of such testing, the concept of an intelligence quo-
tient (IQ), a measurable general level of ability determined principally by nature
rather than nurture, came to exert a signicant inuence on the supply and organisa-
tion of formal education in many countries around the world.
An inuential example of nineteenth-century usage of the terms nature and nur-
ture is to be found in the work of Francis Galton, who in 1874 employed them in
titles of an address given to Royal Institution and in his book English Men of
Science: Their Nature and Nurture.21 Galton emphasised nature over nurture and
coined the term eugenics, which has been dened as the science of improving

16
Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, The New Science of Teaching and Learning: Using the Best of
Mind, Brain, and Education Science in the Classroom (New York: Teachers College Press,
2010), 3.
17
Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, The New Science of Teaching and Learning, 23.
18
Judy Willis, foreword to Mind, Brain, and Education Science: A Comprehensive Guide to
the New Brain-Based Teaching, by Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa (New York: Norton, 2011).
See also the quarterly journal Mind, Brain and Education, ed. by Kurt Fischer and David
Daniel. For the signicance and other modern applications of the term Rosetta Stone see
Richard Aldrich, The Rosetta Stone, International Journal for the Historiography of Edu-
cation 3, 2 (2013): 27381.
19
See, for example, David Yun Dai, The Nature and Nurture of Giftedness: A New
Framework For Understanding Gifted Children (New York: Teachers College Press, 2010);
Nicholas J. Mackintosh, IQ and Human Intelligence, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011); Ken Richardson, The Making of Intelligence (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2000); Robert J. Sternberg, ed., International Handbook of Intelligence (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004); Robert J. Sternberg and Scott Barry Kaufman, eds., The
Cambridge Book of Intelligence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Intelli-
gence: A Multidisciplinary Journal, published since 1977, describes itself as a unique jour-
nal in psychology devoted to publishing original research and theoretical studies and review
papers that substantially contribute to the understanding of intelligence.
20
Alfred Binet, LEtude experimentale de lintelligence (Paris: LHarmattan, 1903).
21
Francis Galton, English Men of Science: Their Nature and Nurture (New York: Appleton,
1874).
856 R. Aldrich

the (esp. human) population by controlled breeding for desirable inherited character-
istics.22 The deleterious effects of this emphasis, which provided a justication for
racist doctrines, have been well charted. For example, Steven Shelden has provided
an account of the part played in the USA by scientists, social theorists, popular
media, and above all by the school textbook, in forming public opinion about bio-
logical determinism.23 Similarly, in the UK Clyde Chitty has traced the connection
between the eugenicist theories of Galton and those of the inuential psychologist,
Cyril Burt, who maintained that the innate intelligence of children could be accu-
rately measured at the age of eleven, thus justifying the assignment of children to
different types of secondary schools.24
In recent decades research into the nature and extent of neuroplasticity, the brains
ability to change as a result of educational and other experiences, has cast doubts on
the concept of IQ25 and laid emphasis on nurture rather than nature. As yet the full
extent of this emphasis remains unclear. Thus Graham Music is cautious when draw-
ing upon recent ndings in the elds of neuroscience, developmental psychology and
attachment theory, arguing that what the research has clearly shown, is that while the
inuences of temperament and genes are important and becoming better understood,
the kind of parenting one receives and the kind of inuences one has as a child can
have a big effect, even if some children are more inuenceable than others.26
On the other hand, Bill Lucas and Guy Claxton have also drawn on recent
research in the neurosciences in a more robust fashion to identify a list of eight
myths about intelligence:27

(1) Intelligence is essentially a one-dimensional commodity largely to be found

in the kinds of thinking required by IQ tests.
(2) Intelligence is relatively xed: educators make use of it, but do not really
alter it.
(3) Mind and body are separate and truly intelligent activity is located in the
mind.
(4) Intelligence is rational and conscious.
(5) Intelligence is a personal possession, and using tools which have the effect
of making you smarter is a kind of cheating.
(6) Intelligence is an individual not a social concept.
(7) The concept of intelligence is universally valid, and not closely tied to the
details and demands of ones particular habitat.
(8) Intelligence is an intellectual function, separate from emotional and moral
functions.
22
The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 9th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 464.
23
See, for example, Steven Selden, Inheriting Shame: The Story of Eugenics and Racism in
America (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999).
24
See Clyde Chitty, Eugenics, Race and Intelligence in Education (London: Continuum,
2007) and the subsequent modication of his argument in The Educational Legacy of Fran-
cis Galton, History of Education 42, 3 (2013): 35064.
25
See, for example, Stephen Murdoch, IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea (Hoboken, NJ:
John Wiley and Sons, 2007) and David Perkins, Outsmarting IQ: The Emerging Science of
Learnable Intelligence (New York: Free Press, 1995).
26
Graham Music, Nurturing Natures: Attachment and Childrens Emotional, Sociocultural
and Brain Development (Hove: Psychology Press, 2011), 242.
27
Bill Lucas and Guy Claxton, New Kinds of Smart: How the Science of Learnable Intelli-
gence Is Changing Education (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2010), 9.
 Paedagogica Historica 857

Two points may be made in concluding this section. The rst is that human intel-
ligence is not just genetically programmed,28 and that IQ, the most common mea-
sure of intelligence, uctuates within a persons lifetime as well as from generation
to generation.29 Secondly, the new science of epigenetics30 demonstrates that genes
and heritable genetic destiny are not immutable. Thus Matt Ridley has followed up
his earlier work on the human genome31 by arguing that we are not essentially deter-
mined by our genes and that human nature is designed for nurture.32 Tim Spector
concludes that you can change your genes, your destiny and that of your children
and grandchildren,33 while Nessa Carey explains that cells read the genetic code in
DNA more like a script to be interpreted rather than a template.34

Futurology and transhumanism

Few historians would probably subscribe to the maxim of Thomas Jefferson, the
American president and polymath who in true New World fashion declared that I
like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. Nevertheless, while
the historian has no gift of prophecy, it may be possible to draw upon the historical
record to situate ourselves in time and to identify possible, probable and preferable
future scenarios and courses of action.35
Futurology (otherwise known as Futurism or Futures Studies) has a variety of
historical roots but is now an established eld of study. For example, the World
Futures Studies Federation (WFSF), founded in Paris in 1973, celebrated its fortieth
anniversary in Bucharest in 2013.36 Jib Fowles monumental edited Handbook of
Futures Research with more than 40 contributions37 has been followed by a bur-
geoning literature, both in respect of Futures Studies in general and with specic ref-
erence to education.38 The largest academic programme in Futures Studies is
currently based at Tamking University, Taiwan, which is also home to the Journal
of Futures Studies. Futurelab was set up in 2001 in the UK by the Department for
Education to build on existing strengths in digital media and content, to monitor

28
Tim Spector, Identically Different: Why You Can Change Your Genes (London: Weidenfeld
and Nicolson, 2012), 78. Results from twin and adoption studies of the IQ of over 30,000
individuals are very consistent, showing an average heritability of around 60 per cent.
29
Michael E. Martinez, Future Bright: A Transforming Vision of Human Intelligence (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2013), xiii.
30
Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene activity that are not caused by changes
in the DNA sequence.
31
Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (London: Fourth
Estate, 1999).
32
Matt Ridley, Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience and What Makes Us Human (London:
Harper Perennial, 2004).
33
Spector, Identically Different, 293.
34
Nessa Carey, The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting Our Under-
standing of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance (London: Icon Books, 2011), 2.
35
See Richard Aldrich, A Future Role for Historians of Education, International Journal
for the Historiography of Education 4, 1 (2014): 13945.
36
Aubrey Yee, The World Futures Studies Federation celebrates 40 years Bucharest
2013, Journal of Futures Studies 18, 1 (2013): 10711. See also the Foresight engine FOR-
Wiki at www.forwiki.ro with its motto bee a visionary (accessed December 19, 2013).
37
Jib Fowles, ed., Handbook of Futures Research (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978).
38
See, for example, Keri Facer, Learning Futures: Education, Technology and Social Change
(London: Routledge, 2011) and the Oxford-based journal Policy Futures in Education.
858 R. Aldrich

social change and to enhance the learning experiences of school children.39 In 2011
it was merged with the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER).
In a volume entitled Learning Futures: Education, Technology and Social
Change, Keri Facer, former Research Director at Futurelab, argues that the current
vision of education based on a global knowledge economy fuelled by international
competition and sustained by digital networks40 is no longer appropriate. She high-
lights the emergence of radical economic and social inequalities and threats to
democracy, and calls for a broader awareness of the current situation, including a
better understanding of the relationships between humans and technology. One con-
cern is that the current vision does not prepare us for the choices we may have to
make about how and whether we wish to augment our intelligence, enhance evolu-
tion, learn across very long lifetimes, or work alongside other forms of machine
intelligence.41
Transhumanism (sometimes abbreviated as H+) is a wide-ranging movement that
seeks to employ the knowledge gained from the new sciences and technologies to
enhance the human race in various ways physically, psychologically and intellec-
tually. One future scenario, based on a combination of neuroscience and computing
technology, is the emergence of a superior articial intelligence coupled with a par-
allel enhancement of the human brain. Jeff Hawkins, inventor of the Palm Pilot and
founder of the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, has argued that our greater
knowledge of the human brain will enable us to construct truly intelligent machines.
Hawkins sees the brain as a memory system that stores experiences, thus providing
the intelligence required both to perform functions in the present and to choose
future courses of action. Enhanced understanding of the human brain is the key to
building intelligent machines that will not simply imitate humans but surpass them
in several ways.42 Ray Kurzweil, entrepreneur and inventor in the elds of comput-
ing, music, education and medicine, is another whose work on such projects as at-
bed scanners, text-to-speech and music synthesisers and print-to-speech reading
machines for the blind, has led him to foretell a future characterised by articial
super-intelligences. Kurzweil predicts that human brains will be scanned to upload
them into computers, while the implantation of nanobots, blood-cell sized devices,
will improve both human intelligence and human health.43 Indeed it is argued that
Brain/Machine Interfaces (BMIs) offer a future in which neural implants are so
widespread that they become necessary to future humans to function normally in a
high tech world.44

39
futurelab.org.uk (accessed December 5, 2013).
40
Facer, Learning Futures, ix.
41
Ibid., 132.
42
http://www.onintelligence.com is a companion website for discussion of Jeff Hawkins with
Sandra Blakeslee, On Intelligence (New York: Henry Holt, 2004) which explains how a new
understanding of the brain will lead to the creation of truly intelligent machines (accessed
December 12, 2013).
43
See, for example, Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed
Human Intelligence (New York: Viking Press, 1999) and How to Create a Mind: The Secret
of Human Thought Revealed (New York: Viking Press, 2012).
44
Arthur Saniotis and Maciej Henneberg, Future Evolution of the Human Brain, Journal of
Futures Studies 16, 1 (2011): 9.
 Paedagogica Historica 859

Conclusions
Three major conclusions may now be drawn. In the last 20 years developments in
such elds as neuroscience, nanotechnology and transhumanism have revolutionised,
but not resolved, the nature-nurture debate. The most important conclusion, as Keller
has argued,45 is that nature and nurture, instead of being opposites, are much more
closely intertwined than previously believed. Epigenetic studies have shown that
genes, though still important, have lost their privileged and prominent status, partic-
ularly as the distinction between nature and nurture disappears.46
Thus the eminent Dutch neuroscientist, Dick Swaab, has recently emphasised that
We Are Our Brains and that many of our orientations in such areas as sex and religion
are formed in neuronal circuits before we are born.47 He has condemned the excessive
belief in social engineering prominent in the 1960s and 1970s when, for example,
gender-based behavioural differences were attributed solely to a domineering
patriarchal society. But Swaab also acknowledges that:
A babys brain continues to develop if provided with affectionate, secure, and stimulat-
ing surroundings. Its shaped by a constant process of learning as well as by native lan-
guage acquisition and the imprint of religious beliefs. And, just as in the womb, the
issue isnt about brain versus environment but about the strong interaction between the
two.48
The second conclusion is that all educationists (and many historians) should draw
on the ndings of neuroscience to inform their work. Thus teachers and parents of
young children would benet greatly from reading on How Babies Think,49 which
shows that until the age of ten the childs brain is twice as active as an adult brain.
Similarly, teachers in secondary, further and higher education (and parents) would
nd much of interest, and perhaps some solace, in Brainstorm: The Power and Pur-
pose of the Teenage Brain,50 which demonstrates how the brain undergoes a com-
plete remodelling between the ages of 12 and 24. All adults (and even some
children) would nd much to ponder in The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain.51
The nal conclusion is that it is particularly important for us as historians of edu-
cation to understand the educational signicance of contemporary neuroscientic
research, including its relevance for such issues as the nature-nurture debate and
human intelligence. Such understanding has the capacity to inuence our work in
three major directions past, present and future. First, whilst always recognising the
validity of the maxim, autres temps, autres murs, it provides the opportunity to
revisit the history and the historiography of these and other educational issues in the
light of this new knowledge. Second, this revisiting will also help to situate such
contemporary claims as that of MBE Science that envisage the possible transforma-
tion of teaching, and indeed of education more broadly, into a hard rather than a
soft discipline, into their historical contexts. The third, more unfamiliar and most
45
Keller, The Mirage of a Space between Nature and Nurture.
46
Spector, Identically Different, 291.
47
Dick Swaab, We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimers, trans. Jane Hedley-Prle
(London: Allen Lane, 2014), 387.
48
Ibid.
49
Alison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff and Patricia K. Kuhl, How Babies Think (London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999).
50
Daniel J. Siegel, Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain (New York:
Penguin, 2013).
51
Strauch, The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain.
860 R. Aldrich

challenging role, is to engage with the work of futurologists who are exploring the
extent to which the human brain, which has slowly evolved over millions of years,
is now increasingly susceptible to fundamental and rapid change. Thus Kurzweils
vision of a not-too-distant future in which self-parking cars are replaced by
self-driving ones and all energy is derived from solar panels may, as the result of the
deployment of BMIs, also ensure that members of the human race, or at least some
of them, are enabled to live much longer, healthier, and more intelligent lives than
hitherto, and indeed to become more than human.52 In this brave new technologi-
cally and ethically challenging world, historians of education have a duty not only
to understand and interpret the possible, probable and preferable futures envisaged
by educational, pharmacological,53 and technical innovations, but also to participate
in their creation.

Acknowledgements
I am most grateful to the editors for their invitation to contribute to this volume and for their
comments on an earlier version of this article.

Notes on Contributor
Richard Aldrich is Emeritus Professor of the History of Education at the Institute of Educa-
tion, University of London, and a former President of ISCHE and UKHES.

52
Ramez Naam, More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement
(New York: Broadway Books, 2005).
53
There is no space here to pursue the issue of pharmacological intervention. Nootropics
(smart drugs) are primarily prescribed for therapeutic use, but in future may increasingly be
used to boost general cognitive abilities.
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