Education refers to the acquisition of skills, knowledge, and information during ones lifetime and may be provided by teachers, parents or by oneself. This paper describes education and its effects on the gender and socioeconomic status on the US minority ethnic communities.
Teachers teach in many subjects including mathematics, reading, history, science, and other specialized professions such as law, astrophysics, zoology among others. The formal learning takes place in several institutions and higher learning centers like universities and colleges. Informal forms of education also exist like from the museums, libraries, and the internet and also involve the life experiences. Right to education is regarded as one of the basic human rights among other rights. The educators use various systems ranging from training, teaching and giving instructions to the learners. Levels of education are the primary, secondary, higher education, adult education, alternative education, indigenous education system and the emotional / human education systems (Wag staff).
The higher education rates and advanced levels is important to attain higher economic growth in the different USA ethnic communities like the African Americans, Hispanics, Latin Americans, etc since education has a lot of the positive impacts on the learners, that is, the behavior modification that the learners experience in the course of learning is very vital in adulthood. Learners are able to acquire the basic desirable habits in the learning environment right from preschools until adulthood. The disadvantaged groups including the Hispanics and the Blacks lack access to this basic introduction which would affect them in their adulthood and they may not be able to develop the needed attitudes to face life positively.
Education also opens up the learners’ minds to conceptualize things fast and provide the necessary solutions thus individuals would be able to undertake educational researches to find solutions for hard problems in the society. Individuals would therefore be able to provide expert advice and leadership to the community in hard situations (i.e. during economic downturns) hence the minority groups who fail to attain higher education levels may not attend to their own problems.
Education benefits the learners enormously on the area of entrepreneurship since they are able to learn the necessary entrepreneurial and management skills and hence would be able to identify viable opportunities and also navigate their companies in the current competitive environment. Educated persons would be able to identify the strengths, the weaknesses, opportunities, and the threats facing his / her business where the poor marginalized blacks and Latin Americans (with minimal education background) are unable to fathom (Sola Asa).
Education on the other hand is very important since students learn a wide range of lessons that would impart vital life skills to them. Learners are able to know the current life threats such as HIV/AIDS scourge. They learn about pregnancy and means to avoid unwanted pregnancies. All these are important in the current socioeconomic environment of which the minority groups may easily fall victim due to lack of education (Feyisetan BJ).
Education system is very important in imparting the legal knowledge to the learners. The current business environment needs legal experts who would help in resolving conflicts like the court cases in addition to protection of the copyrights, patents, wills executions, etc require advanced legal knowledge which the minority groups lack. The advantaged individuals (whites) are also able to defend their rights and understand the existing regulations and the impacts of the new legislations like the labor laws. Learners would also understand their other human rights i.e. right of religion, right of cooperation, right of movement, right of expression among others.
Education programs have been globalized and learners are engaged in learning the foreign languages to be able to exist comfortably in the foreign countries. Individuals would be able to do business (globally) with ease and exchange culture with foreigners. Commodities and services would be able to cross borders to new markets and the foreign direct investments and mergers / acquisition would be done by investing partners who are more advantaged (than the marginalized).
Education systems have also trained learners to become competitive farmers who would engage in improved farm product quality and improved productivity. Farmers would be introduced to the current scientific farming like the genetically modified products. This has been instrumental in solving the current food crisis among those who gain access to learning facilities while the few races who do not gain higher education fail to liberate themselves from food crises. Also jobs created are minimal and most of them remain unemployed. The marginalized Hispanics and blacks remain practicing traditional subsistence farming due to lack of proper education.
Education is the key to solving unemployment problem in the current economies. The increased unemployment rates among the Latin Americans and blacks are caused by their uneducated nature and remain unaware of the available opportunities and also do not possess the needed qualifications. The advantaged races in America would be willing to enter into self employment since they have access to capital providers like the banks and friends unlike the disadvantaged thus they are able to start profitable ventures and reduce the unemployment levels (Kincheloe and Steinberg, 2007).
Another benefit of education is on the family planning by the educated white women who are aware of the techniques unlike the black women who may not read the basic instructions hence end up having many unplanned children. This affects the population problems among the poorer races hence overpopulation complexities like health problems affect them a lot.
Education in all levels ranging from the lower grades to the university level is important in reducing gender disparities and empowering women since they learn to socialize with other learners from diverse backgrounds and this is very vital in fostering tolerance to culture differences and corporation among the learners. This is needed for economic and social interdependentness especially for women in resolving the conflicts and gender related violence through dialogue. This is not true among the black American women and other small ethnic groups since they do not access full education.
Education systems also offer special education skills to the learners like the skills for the blind, the deaf, the lame and the mentally retarded individuals. The learners are taught the Braille, the dolphin pen etc that would go along way in empowering them socially and economically. Disabled learners from the minority races have minimal access to these services and therefore most of them fail to exploit their full potential (Bbigbola).
Statistics by the USA bureau of statistics on the incomes of the educated black women and men are demonstrated below:
Median Annual Income, by Level of Education, 1990–2006:
Statistics above reveal that educated men are paid higher than women of the same education level. This indicates adverse gender disparity among the blacks and other smaller ethnic minorities. The wage rate generally is lower in comparison to those of the majority ethnic groups with the same education level.
Gender and ethnicity has also been addressed by the education systems whereby currently all individuals regardless of their gender or the ethnic background can venture into any education specialization like engineering, law, anthropology among others without reservations (Kincheloe and Steinberg, 2007). This has attempted to close inequality gap and reduce the gender related aggressions but the minorities encounter other problems that may result in drop outs and this affect them once they become adults. The ethnicity mentality among the blacks has also not been rooted out since most people from disadvantaged backgrounds have not fully attained higher education in the current society.
Educated persons in urban environment are able to secure formal employment where they are paid attractively as compared to those in the rural setting where job vacancies are minimal and are poorly paid. Educated individuals in rural areas do not have access to many investment opportunities like the stock markets which are found in cities therefore they lack diversification means in real estates.
Standard of education in rural areas is quite low compared to the education in cities and this brings disparities in the learning levels. The rural folks practice farming as an additional vocation; their educational needs are wanting and they should be upgraded to help solve the complex problems in the environment.
Education system has also enabled medical doctors to carry out intensive researches into the cause of the incurable diseases like AIDS. This has made the health care very unaffordable among the poor minorities who do not have adequate education and hence the death rates and suffering among them is still alarming (Dunn A.). In addition, infant mortality has not achieved considerable decline among the blacks as compared to those from the whites.
Education has tremendous socioeconomic benefits for the minorities but more efforts need to be input in education by the government for all the community groups in USA to realize comparable benefits.
References
Dunn A, (2004). Malaria knowledge Programme: policy Brief. Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine UK;
Ewoigbokhan SE: Morbidity Data and their Interpretation for Nigerian Children.Paper presented at a seminar on Applied Research on Child Health. 2000.
Fevisetan BJ, Sola Asa, Ebigbola, J. (2000). A mothers Management of Childhood Diseases in Yoruba Land; The Influence of Cultural Beliefs, Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey 1999 Cal, Maryland: National Population Commission (England)
Hodge RW (1964): “Occupational Prestige in the United States, 1925–1963”. American Journal of Sociology 1964, 70.
Joe L. Kincheloe, Shirley R. Steinberg (2007). Cutting class: socioeconomic status and education‎. New York: Rowman & Littlefield
Wag staff A: Socio economic Inequalities in Child Mortality; Comparisons across Nine Developing Countries. Bulletin of the WHO 2000, 78(1):19-29.