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Social Promblems
Austin Rattotti
Social Problems
October 17, 2012
Take Home Essay

Beliefs and Culture, Achieved Status, and Values

As stated in the article “Before a Test, A Poverty of Words”, one’s beliefs and culture greatly affect the lives of individuals. In the article, they state that Black and Hispanic students are hardly represented at all, and they have been doing poorly on the exams given out by the schools. “Expanding the ranks of poor Black and Hispanic children in the top high schools would seem to require infinitely more backtracking”. There is ample evidence that increasing the amount of vocabulary words in a child’s mind before the age of six, the child will be better educated in his/her older years. Schools are unable to punish children that entered the school with learning deficiencies. Most children achieve the highest score on the math section of a New York State required test; meanwhile, only 3.2% of children achieve the highest score in Language Arts. The outcome of these exams leads us to believe that we must invest more money in our pre-schools. Some people seem to believe that if children are exposed to more complex subjects at an early age, that child can put it to use later on during high school. The wide range of ethnicities in Brooklyn leads to a diverse area in which cultures collide. For instance, many families cannot afford to invest in their child’s pre-school years depending on their social status. Many people place greater importances on specific subjects depending on their families’ traditions. Kids nowadays only focus on subjects they show interest in, rather than their classes as a whole. Even people who have graduated college are forced to take unskilled jobs, or jobs that they didn’t need to go to college for.
Many people in today’s times are underemployed and are not working their achieved status. Achieved status is a position earned based on a certain set of skills that an individual has. Ever since the economy has

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