Environmental Conditions Effect Literacy in Education

Education has proved to have a two-fold function to perform in the life of students and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a student to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing ability the genuine goals of his or her life. Education must also train one for quick, firm and effective thinking. To think wisely and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by opinion of half truths, prejudices, and propagandas. [incorporate culture from first sentence?] On a cultural level, education separates us economically and creates social classes. It leads us with knowledge and tools to be educationally and economically more successful than the past generations. Education builds us our future to help us gain literacy through basic reading and writing while encouraging our knowledge on multiple life aspects. Literacy is the keystone of education. Only through acquiring literacy can we engage in the educational process. Without equality between schools, the opportunities that come with literacy and education are not available for all. It seems that all of these opportunities, and education itself, is inherent because The environment in which one lives is largely determinant of their educational success.

Most people believe that everyone has the right to receive education, but it is one's own prerogative to determine how intellectually advanced they will become. The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. This could be true in many cases because schools will always provide the training and selection process, but environment is a big idea that can change all of this. In creating supportive school environments, it is vital to plan for the diverse needs of students and their families, including cultural and linguistic diversity, gender, sexuality, disability and ability, among many other factors. Economic hardship can combine with other factors to worsen the risk that students will not achieve to their full potential. Environment within schools and school districts can be a hard thing to conquer, but there are many conditions that are helpful in improving literacy in schools across the country.

The number one environmental issue is the socio-economic levels that each child comes from. High poverty places an immense effect on the ability to learn in school due to the home environment. The cycles of poverty and poor education feed upon each other: one who comes from a poor home is likely to be a student of a poor school district, one who comes from a poor school district is not likely to succeed in the realm of higher education and the job market. The literacy levels in less wealthy areas are typically lower due to a lack of reading and learning at home. It is unfair to compare these children to their wealthier counterparts because of the disparate available resources. It rarely occurs that one emerges from their impoverished background to become wealthy and successful, yet our educational system promises that this rags to riches "American dream" is a possibility. Students who are at entirely different levels of literacy are given the same tests and expected to score competitively. Socioeconomics account for so much more than simply resources within the school. Children who come from disadvantaged homes may be too preoccupied with parental abuse or not receiving enough food to eat to perform well on these tests. [get rid of this..It is hard to get through school knowing where each family background is; when there is a will there is a way. Everyone needs a mentor in their life to guide them some way, and they need their inner strength to get them all the way there. In every society there will always be a leader, but who is to say that this leader needs to have a rich family to back him up. Why can't he succeed on his own? There is no reason! We must use our past failures to succeed in our society and in our own personal lives. ] Educators today need to make it so that Schooling is so efficient that it accounts for a poor home environment and transcends economic barriers. Yet this is nearly impossible considering the behavioral and emotional effects that are manifest in children who come from dysfunctional homes.

Gender is something we often do not think about, but it is an environmental issue that should possibly be looked at further within each school. Gender impacts on the schooling experiences and post-school pathways of both girls and boys. If schools are to meet the needs of students in their diverse communities, it is important to understand the way gender intersects with other factors to increase or decrease educational risk.

[maybe you want to include this maybe not..]The way in which children are socialized from birth to adhere to specific gender roles also impacts educational