The Issues of Ethnicity in Education Essay

Education is considered one of the most important and exciting processes in everyone’s life. Unfortunately, many children have to deal with some problems during education, and this time of their lives becomes one of the worst ones. The problems are usually connected with ethnic differences because many adolescents do not accept someone being different (Geven et al. 1480). The purpose of this paper is to view ethnic differences and difficulties in education from sociological and historical perspectives.

It is hard to disagree that there is a lack of equality in the sphere of education. Usually, students that belong to ethnic minority groups feel discriminated by their classmates and even teachers. This inequality is manifested not only in teaching and evaluation but also in some other situations. For example, researchers note that “ethnic minority adolescents receive not only less formal mental health services than their ethnic majority peers but also less school-based mental health services” (Verhulp et al. 160). It seems that there should be some reasons for this problem and ways of solving it.

From the historical perspective, it is obvious that students’ difficulties because of their differences are the consequences of the bad attitude toward ethnic minority people that was in the past. For many people, it is still hard to accept those who look and act not as they do, and the same was hundreds of years ago. From the sociological perspective, it is possible to note that many ethnic minority children and teenagers grow up in poverty, see a lot of violence, and think that this is the only possible way of living.

Entering the school community, some ethnic minority children act differently and scare others. According to Geven et al., “especially for ethnic minority students, the proportion of ethnic minorities in school tends to have a detrimental effect on cognitive school outcomes and thereby calls for the ethnic integration of schools” (1473). In other words, schools should be changed in order to accept all the students and not to divide them by their ethnicity.

To draw a conclusion, one may say that there is no doubt about the presence of ethnic differences and problems in education. All students, regardless of their ethnicity, have the right to good education and fair treatment. Probably, one of the best solutions to this problem is to integrate the schools so that they are free of inequality and are appropriate places for ethnic minority students.

Works Cited

Geven, Sara, et al. “The Ethnic Composition of Schools and Students’ Problem Behaviour in Four European Countries: The Role of Friends.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 42, no. 9, 2016, pp. 1473-1495.

Verhulp, Esmée E., et al. “Ethnic Differences in Teacher–Student Relationship Quality and Associations With Teachers’ Informal Help for Adolescents’ Internalizing Problems.” Springer, vol. 27, no. 2, 2019, pp. 160-181.