A simple model is that some people will do well regardless, some will do poorly regardless, and the middle will perform dependent on what environment they're pu

A simple model is that some people will do well regardless, some will do poorly regardless, and the middle will perform dependent on what environment they're put in. I'm not saying really smart people don't exist, obviously we've all met mentally disabled people who cannot be taught higher math so why wouldn't there be people who get it really easily? But I do think most people by far are in the middle group. Teach them well, encourage them, and they do well. Fail to do so and they do badly. But if you agree with such a model you must see that in aggregate, nurture wins. There's a bunch of people who wouldn't know any calculus or whatever if they hadn't been set to do certain problems while being educated. If you look at something like private education in the UK, you see this very thing. Kids are coached and they do well, on average. They're confident and they're well drilled. Not every kid in those schools does well, and not every kid who does well went to one of those schools. Yet stats show that the 7% of kids who went to private schools get about 50% of the Oxbridge places.