(responding to this idea more than this particular quote, since several of you expressed the same opinion)
Sure but you can be gifted with more than big hands or being 8 feet tall. You can also be gifted with a better performing brain (ie higher IQ) - while everyone is born knowing nothing and have to learn everything there is a great variance in each persons ability to learn.
I recognize that I'm going to be a minority opinion on this topic, and I'm okay with that.
I think that your "ability to learn" is a learned skill, too, just like everything else. Every baby is born without it. We all have to learn how to do it. I agree there are differences, but those differences are the product of your experiences and not your innate abilities.
In general, everything except your physical traits is a learned skill. Dancing is learned, and there is no "gene" for being a good dancer. Reading is learned. Study skills and deductive reasoning are learned. Persuasive writing is learned. None of these things are abilities you are born with. Every single person has to learn them, and some people learn them more thoroughly than others. The differences are not genetic, they're behavioral.
To believe otherwise is to flirt with racism and eugenics. If you honestly believe that some people are naturally superior to others by virtue of their birthright, then it's not much a stretch to believe that whole genetic classes of people are superior to other genetic classes of people. I think we've collectively put that argument to bed, as a society, by recognizing that "race" is just as much a social construct as it is a biological one. Your genes determine the way you look, not who you are.
Genes code for proteins. That's ALL they do. There is no gene for intelligence, or musical ability, or a love of the sea. These things are entirely environmental, because there is no mechanism for storing them in your DNA. I think most people too easily fall prey to the convenient misconception that their "genes" somehow define them and predetermine their traits and abilities, and that's basically bullshit on every level. You are born with DNA that determines the way your physical body grows, not what you do with it, so if we're talking about something you "do" with your body then we're talking about a learned skill that is not inheritable. If we're talking about what your body "is" then there's probably a genetic component, though even there I think we all recognize that physical traits (like muscle size or endurance or coordination) can be trained over time.
Anytime you look at your own failures and blame your DNA, you're embracing a lame excuse. Your DNA doesn't make you sleep in on Monday mornings and miss work. Your DNA can't make you a bad computer programmer. It can't make you a bad dancer, or a bad reader, or a bad father. That's all on you.
Obviously, I make exceptions for real disabilities. If you're born paralyzed, your ability dance will be impaired. If you're born with Downs Syndrome, your reading and reasoning skills will top out earlier than most.
You are conflating exposure to development opportunities with ability to retain/absorb/learn things.
I'm not conflating them, which implies accidental confusion, I'm deliberately suggesting they are the same thing. Your ability to retain/absorb/learn things is the product of your developmental opportunities. Kids who attend preschool do better in high school, not because they are smarter but because they have learned how to learn at an early stage of their development. Kids who attend 3rd grade football camp are more likely to end up in the NFL, not because they are genetically superior but because they get their fundamentals down early. You can absolutely learn how to learn, by building a base of the required prerequisite skills. That learning starts the day you're born, but we all start from the same place.