Low Socio-Economic Status of Parents of Children - Research Paper Example

Research work is therefore committed to comparing the achievement of students in literacy for students of low socio-economic status and their participation in pre-kindergarten programs.

Research Problem
Though the low socio-economic status of parents of children greatly affects the children’s educational achievement, there remain a sample of these children from low socio-economic background whose cases have not been given critical attention and these are children from the low socio-economic background who do not receive pre-kindergarten education at all. This means that there are generally two groups of children from low socio-economic backgrounds, who are those who attend pre-kindergarten and those who do not attend. Among these two, there is a great gap in terms of academic achievement especially when they begin mainstream education. This is because those who attend no pre-kindergarten tend to lack a whole year’s curriculum provisions. This makes it difficult for such students who did not receive the pre-kindergarten education to bridge the wide gap of a year’s handicap. What worsens the case and makes the gap even wider is the fact that once mainstream education starts, the socio-economic situation of such students does not improve and so their learning continues to deteriorate. On the part of those who receive pre-kindergarten education, they can match up with their colleagues from well-to-do backgrounds especially when they receive motivation to put in their best in learning (Spodek & Scirocco, 1994).

Background and justification
Several existing studies justify the research problem stated above. First, there is research on the spiral nature of the educational curriculum (Seefeldt, 1993). This particular research sought to examine the relationship between lessons studied at the pre-kindergarten stage and the lessons studied in mainstream education starting from the kindergarten stage. The research proved that pre-kindergarten education is a direct continuation of pre-kindergarten education. The only changes are that as a spiral keeps acquiring a larger bottom as it goes up, so do the lessons taught at the kindergarten level become complicated to those studied at the pre-kindergarten stage. What this means is that studies from low socio-economic backgrounds that stay out of pre-kindergarten education would have great difficulty coping with the advanced learning done in mainstream education. Another research is on the natural maturity of the human brain. According to this research, factors that affect the natural maturity of the brain include factors that allow for personal well-being and satisfaction (Webb, 2003). What this means is that as children continue to be deprived of basic social provisions because of their socio-economic background, their natural rate of mental development becomes affected and this hinders successful learning in mainstream education.

Deficiencies in the evidence
One area of major deficiency in the evidence presented in the literature or research above has to do with the absence of a study that sought to examine whether, at the early stages of their lives, children had any psychological effects on their socio-economic backgrounds. This awareness would have made the literature more complete in the sense that it would have been possible to argue whether or not the challenges children from low socio-economic backgrounds go through are just a result of the inability of their parents to buy needed learning materials for them or it includes other factors such as the psychological trauma that the student’s backgrounds bring upon them. The writer is however convinced that at such tender ages, children do not suffer any psychological traumas as a result of poor family backgrounds.
Audience
The major beneficiary of the present research is the parent of the child from a low socio-economic background. Read More