Ethnicity, Culture or Counseling Diveristy Term Paper

(Searight; Gafford, 2005) There are also changes in the value systems of the different communities as the ecological situation of the communities change and this may be due to historical changes or shifts into new areas by the individuals. Even within the same group of individuals, the value systems may be different among individuals due to differences in income, occupation, conditions of living situations and the duration or the level of intensity of exposure to another culture. There are many sources of diversity within the same cultural group due to the relative influence of traditional culture values, socioeconomic features, the experiences of migration, the functional demands and requirements and cultural makeup of the ecological niche, and the duration and intensity of exposing to a different culture. (Roosa; Dumka; Gonzales; Knight, 2002)

One of the most important facilities that humans have is to draw inferences from limited knowledge. The question remains as to the starting time of this facility in humans. Experiments have been carried out in children of low age groups and even as low as five years to find out whether they have this capacity. The tests there had to be conclusive and thus categorization had to be distinctive and thus test whether the categorization led to inferences. It was seen that inferences were easily drawn from one category of animals to another. The subjects were told to imagine an island where all members of one category have a particular disease. Let us say that this animal was rabbits which is easy for the children to understand and relate to. The question was then put as to the proportion of another animal that had the disease also, let us say dogs. (Heit; Hahn, 2001)

The logic that was followed in estimation was that the similarity between the animals was mainly taken into account. The entire process of extension depended on similarity between the animals and the target or the animal for consideration. What this means in simpler terms is that it was easier for the children to make stronger inferences from rabbits to dogs than makes inferences from rabbits to bears. This is in line with the concepts of philosophy where the similarity between a premise and a conclusion is the most critical deciding factor of the strength of any inductive inference. In life drawing inference is however always dependent on multiple sources of evidence and multiple categories before an inference can be drawn. (Heit; Hahn, 2001)

The changes in medical ethics of United States have only come in the last 30 years as in this period the emphasis has moved from physician beneficence to greater insistence on patient autonomy. On the other side, in many Asian societies including those from India and Pakistan the decisions may be jointly taken by the family members and the physicians together. This difference in culture will also take effect on children who are exposed to it. For the terminally ill, the responsibility is for the family to take care. This situation leads to the doctor also being adopted ritually in the family in Pakistan and being addressed as parent, aunt, uncle or elder brother. The concern about care for the elders is different even between the whites and the blacks within United States. The concern of white physicians is likely to be more on the suffering that the patient is going through, black physicians and patients are more likely to be concerned about the suffering being spiritually meaningful as they always feel to life to have some value. On the other hand, Hispanics who are becoming a larger section of the population in America are not likely to appoint one person as being in charge as they are afraid of offending other relatives and they are likely to have the decisions taken consensually. (Searight; Gafford, 2005) Even when the person does not see this directly while growing up, the effects may be felt through some other sources.

Well we are all now aware that a major part of the ethnic differences and related differences among grown up citizens come from the development at the start of life, as children. There have been quite a few experiments on changing the position of children through Preschool Programs and the best effects were seen from the program taken up by David Weikart. This served 123 children with ages between the ages of three and four. The children were then followed by researchers till they reached the age of 27. According to the published research, these students showed higher scholastic performances in eighth grade, higher completion rates for completion of high school, higher rates for getting employed, lower levels of juvenile crime and arrests and lower rates of teenage pregnancy. The comparison was made with students who did not attend this preschool. (Bassok; Stipek; Inkelas; Kuo. 2003)

Another well-known study was the Carolina Abecedarian program for children and this also showed very strong effects. This was an intensive program starting from infancy up to the age of five and this had full day educational programs supported by medical and social services. There was also a program for education of parents. Here a follow up study of the children was conducted of 57 experimental children and 54 children as control when the children were 21 years old. It was seen that children who had gone through the program developed higher IQ as also higher test scores in both reading and math. The parents who put their children in this program were likely to be graduates from four-year colleges and had their children within one year of leaving college.

The programs were successful and thus a total of 12 such programs were prepared in the early part of 1980s to examine the long-term effects of the programs. There were differences in the programs regarding the age at which the children entered the programs and the services provided under the programs. Students who went through these programs were less likely to be put to special education classes and also less likely to be held back in a grade than the children in the control groups with them. Of the four programs that were surveyed, the children went through high school or were old enough for completion of high school, it was seen that the students through the special programs completed high school in greater proportion. (Bassok; Stipek; Inkelas; Kuo. 2003)

The interesting point is that for children growing up in United States, early childhood care and education have now become a very common experience. Most of the children entering kindergarten today generally have gone through some sort of preschool care and thus it can be said clearly that a greater share of kindergarteners of today has gone through preschool. These preschool and care centers try to develop the young children's early academic skills through different enriching activities and sometime even take up direct instruction. There are however wide differences in the quality of care that is given. This will certainly make an effect on the development of the child as has been seen in the analysis given earlier. Again, whether the children should be put in a center or not depends on ethnic differences. Hispanic children are less likely to be put in a care center than white children and the black children are most likely to be in a care center. (Magnuson; Waldfogel, 2005)

Thus the result of care centers may be to widen the gaps due to racial and ethnic differences of the children though the action of the care centers has no effect per se on the race or ethnicity. Thus it is important that children be enrolled in such care centers, and spends enough number of years and enough time in them. If this is done then the gaps due to ethnicity and race may be brought down to an appreciable extent. (Magnuson; Waldfogel, 2005) The concept of the roles of fathers by the children of today will be taken up by them based on their ideas of the roles of fathers and mothers as they have seen earlier. This will be carried on when they become parents. (Cabrera; Tamis-LeMonda; Bradley; Hofferth; Lamb, 2000) Yet considering the situations in the families of today, it is probably more important for the fathers to have a greater involvement in the development of children.

As already discussed earlier, one of the major sources of development of children is the mother, and among mothers from different ethnicity, there are significant differences in use of language. It has been seen that black and Hispanic mothers talk less to their children than white mothers and they also do not read to them every day. This leads to differences in readiness for school and it has been seen that when the mothers start talking to the children more, the differences between the races come down by a figure between 25 to 50%. Certainly it is a matter that parents can attend to if they want to. There was…