PA579-V05 Final Report. Ethics and Professional Concerns Influencing Education.

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Course: Ethics and Professional Responsibility
Assignment: Final Paper Proposal: Ethics and Professional Concerns Influencing Education Inequalities
Topic: Education
Ethics and Professional Concerns Influencing Education
Executive Summary
Can the ills of inequalities, discriminations, corruption, as modified by race, ethnicity, gender, or religion, make up ethical and professional malfunction in our education system? The unfair practices appear to permeate all spheres, aspects of disciplines human life. The tenets of morality and ethics are constantly under attack, where people no longer value ethical, moral, and just society. Ideally, the factors driving inequalities, immorality, and unethical practices, reflects a clash of selfish pursuits against the overall expected, generalized moral code of conduct and ethics. This paper is a deep interrogation of the concepts surrounding educational inequalities and solutions in the context of moral and ethical philosophy.
Education is one of the areas heavily burdened by societal ills that continue to perpetuate injustice. The ills and malpractices in society, which constitute a substantial meltdown in ethics and professionalism, appear to erode social and public thrust, aggravate inequality, and sabotage socio-economic and political developments. Corruptions and misappropriation of resources top the malpractice list that threatens the fabric of justice, morality, ethics, and professionalism. As a result, there immense inequalities and inequalities are witnessed being manifested by substantial disparities in income, health access and, education opportunities, and resource access.
Managing and mitigating educational inequalities do not only require systemic changes but need philosophical shifts in our thinking, perceptions, and stand on ethics, morality, and laws. Many semantic changes have been made, but this has not substantially impacted the broadening educational inequalities. Even in cases where there have been some affirmative actions to rectify glaring educational inequalities, affirmative action has been received with mixed reactions. Some are against affirmative action, arguing that such action or step is unnecessary because they perceive it as a practice to benefit some at the expense of the whole population. The proponents of affirmative action’s feel that these measures would help reduce the widening educational progression and achievements between minority, low-income communities and the wealthier, privileged, and more dominating groups.
The excellent performing educational system refers to the one that strongly integrates equity, equality, and quality. These are educational systems that provide learners with almost equal access to educational opportunities and achievements. The unfair education system will always disadvantaged, condemned, fail, and penalize some students for their whole life. Most of these learners have no control over the factors that drive educational inequalities and limit the opportunities to progress and achieve specific educational standards. The motivators of educational inequalities, including poverty, race, and place of origin, have far-reaching implications that innocent learners and young children have no control over. Since they are young children, don’t we have a moral and ethical conviction to take measures that ensure better access to educational opportunities and achievements by the less privileged and disadvantaged children due to factors outside their span of control like race and poverty?
Again, are there any substantial reasons for underpinning the collaborative, concerted, and organized efforts towards more equitable educational opportunities and progress? Can the affirmative benefit the disadvantaged? Can equitable access to educational opportunities benefit the whole society? These are critical questions that often pose whenever issues to educational inequalities are raised. When children cannot progress in education due to educational inequalities factors, the chance of success in life diminishes. When they get to adulthood, the lives of such children become more difficult because lifetime earnings would be reduced. Their adaptation to highly dynamic knowledge-based economies would be low, combined with higher unemployment risks than their educated counterparts. Disadvantaged learners who lack access to educational opportunities are unlikely to further their learning in higher learning institutions and will be less able to fully engage in discussions that revolve around discussions on democratic practices of our modern societies and civic discourses. Educational failure is an adverse effect on the whole society. The poorly educated populace is often associated with a constrained capacity to produce, develop and innovate within the economy. Educational failures often lead to improved social cohesions, restricted mobility, and socio-economic troubles such as increased crime and drug trafficking, which would increase costs for dealing with various outcomes in society, including managing and controlling criminal activities. The inadequately educated populace has far-reaching ramifications of adverse health outcomes, increased economic challenges, and inabilities to appropriately adapt to the ever-evolving world, leading to increased burdens such as increased expenditure of managing societal ills and health diseases, among others. Thus, reducing educational disparities and enhancing access to equitable educational opportunities would embolden persons’ and society’s capacity to tackle and adapt to highly changing economic environment, improve health, and contribute to economic growth and individual social well-being.
Education Inequality in the U.S
The current and future is marked by struggle and challenges, emanating from busting population numbers couples with a receding resource base. The limited resources create a fierce completion for inadequate opportunities. This stiff competition underpins or partly explains the immense level of inequality in all sphere of life. The issues of inequality permeate public, political, social, and scholarly discourses. People have often tried to unravel and understand the controversial issue of inequality and try to provide mitigation measures to tame inequalities in various sectors. The disparities and gaps that define inequality are intricate products reflecting the interaction of many intertwining factors.
Education inequality is a palpable phenomenon in the U.S. The observation that the U.S is one of the global spaces that are most heterogeneous based on its citizenry composition, there risk for inequalities increases as the place of origin, race and ethnicity would be critical defining factors with regard to resource and opportunities access. More often, the homogenous populations are unlikely to experience explicit discrimination, prejudice, bias, disparities, or inequalities, owing to the minimal variations and differences that people have amongst them. The homogenous populations inhabiting an area express little genetic diversity and socio-political diversity. Contrastingly, the heterogeneous population manifested by substantial variation in genetic make-up, physical and psychosocial traits and thinking, and socio-political difference. For instance, people of heterogeneous genetic origin will express widening gaps in physical heights, disease immunity and predisposition and hair texture, among many other variant aspects. Managing nations marked by a remarkable sense of diversity is challenging due to the emergence of conflicting and clashing interests that pit particular groups against others when it comes to various discussions relating to access to opportunities and resources, as well as enjoying specific rights.
Is the U.S a heterogeneous society? Yes, with a population of 328,239,523 people according to the U.S census, made of Whites, Hispanics, African Americans, Asians, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Latinos, and mixed races, it makes it one of the most adverse societies globally. The heterogeneity of the U.S population based on race and dominancy modified by historical developments underpins remarkable disparities with most aspects of humanity. Social class is one of the critical predictors of education modified by race, gender and ethnicity. The observation that external factors appear to have a profound impact on the education of children is a worrying trend. It means that odds are already against some children in pursuit of education of opportunities.
Over the last century, the U.S education system has been marred by varied attainment levels among learners not defined by individual learning ‘efforts but by race, ethnicity, and socio-economic class. U.S has comparatively mediocre education results when contrast is made between the U.S and some nations including Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K (Gamoran & Bruch, 2017). The emerging variance in educational achievement and achievement in the U.S has increased drastically over recent times to reflect the widening distribution and growing differences between young people from diverse socio-economic and racial backgrounds (Bailey and Dynarski 2011; Reardon 2011).
Bailey and Dynarski (2011) found out that there is increasing benefits for children growing up in high-income families’ backgrounds. While tracking diverse education attainment measures including college entry, continuity, and completion, children were more successful in children raised from wealthier and high-income families than their low-income class counterparts (Bailey and Dynarski, 2011). Equally puzzling are the happenings that show that the female gender is doing much better in education than male counterparts due to resources infusions and bolster, especially from wealthier families. Women are already outpacing men in educational attainment and success, reflecting a feat that was non-existent before. The female edge in educational success is well pronounced in the top quartile of the income distribution. These observations raise serious concerns on what could contribute to education inequality to even children who are raised from the same family, yet the income difference effect is non-existence, as marked by girls achieving more than boys. However, it presents education disparities when it comes to the female gender, where wealthier families can have their children access better education opportunities and resources than their poor counterparts. Some have argued that girls' current success, where they are outpacing boys in education, is because these groups target separate labor markets (Bailey and Dynarski, 2011).
More often, the barrier to education constitutes the most massive single threat to education equality. On the economic aspect or income, tuition fees and related costs make up primary blockage to education access. Besides fording costs associated with schooling, disparities in providing public education partly contribute to unequal educational opportunities, especially in poorly resourced schools, as compared to well-resourced and funded institutions. Students from limited resources families have constrained educational progress.
Owing to cultural diversity, linguistic and cultural differences can impair access to education, thereby confounding the issue of schooling disparities. Communication skills constitute indisputable competence in learning. Language influences how learners acquire a given set of skills and knowledge: knowledge transmission is affected by language. Some learners may find it difficult to understand and speak a particular language due to differences in language, accent, and pronunciation. Linguistic and cultural diversity is deeply engraved in society. Despite its substantial relevance, the concept of language difference is often ignored in varied educational settings. There is a contested notion that learners have to get and develop professional on instructors’ language as a point of reference. This assumption is problematic because the leaners’ knowledge of language and culture remains underused and devalued since the students have to model their language to fit that of the speaker. The lack of education in native languages is implying exclusion, especially among the minorities and migrants populations. The UN recommends that states or countries take suitable steps to allow persons belonging to minorities to access adequate opportunities to learn about their native language or have instruction presented in their native language, especially in early educational, developmental phases (Singh, 2014).
Educational Ethics in the face of Inequalities
When it comes to educational inequalities, lack of ethical and moral standings will aggravate the widening educational gap between the privileged and less privileged classes in terms of defining features, like race, gender, incomes, and place of origin political inclinations. Some of the fundamental causes of educational inequalities are deeply rooted in our ethical and moral fabric in our societies and considering how such moral convictions inform legal and policy frameworks that nurture or worsen educational disparities. According to the United Nations, children’s access ...