Good Childhood Opens All Doors

Abitur 2013 Text I Com­po­si­ti­on Topic 1: Does social sta­tus affect a person’s opti­ons? Discuss.

Von Kon­rad Heidler

Good Childhood Opens All Doors

You have pro­ba­b­ly seen “Slum­dog Mil­lionaire”, a movie about a young Indi­an who grew up in the slums of Mum­bai but then made a for­tu­ne on a TV quiz show. It is a gre­at exam­p­le of a per­son with litt­le to no edu­ca­ti­on suc­cee­ding in life. Sad­ly, rea­li­ty is dif­fe­rent in most cases. In real life, your future is deter­mi­ned by your social sta­tus from a very ear­ly age on.

Even though you can get a col­lege degree for free in many count­ries, the­re are still many obs­ta­cles that pre­vent stu­dents with poor or unedu­ca­ted par­ents from get­ting past high school gra­dua­ti­on. While col­lege tui­ti­on its­elf is free for exam­p­le at com­mu­ni­ty col­leges, it is still a huge bur­den for poorer fami­lies to get their child­ren through col­lege as they won’t make their own money for at least ano­ther four years. Also col­lege tui­ti­on isn’t the only expen­se a stu­dent needs to worry about. The money stu­dents need for books and other lear­ning mate­ri­als may seem ridi­cu­lous­ly litt­le at first, but it real­ly adds quick­ly, essen­ti­al­ly deny­ing the­se ado­le­s­cents the pos­si­bi­li­ty to go to college.

Ano­ther reason why a young person’s life is hea­vi­ly influen­ced by their social back­ground is the fact that many child­ren ido­li­ze their par­ents and want to lead their lives the same way their par­ents do. A trashman’s son won’t be too ambi­tious about making it up to the top becau­se his dad sets him an exam­p­le of how to live.

Final­ly what real­ly spoils equal job oppor­tu­ni­ties is the cost of extra­cur­ri­cu­lar edu­ca­ti­on. Stu­dies have shown that play­ing an instru­ment in your child­hood for exam­p­le will increase your cogni­ti­ve abili­ties to an incre­di­ble ext­ent. To stick with the exam­p­le, if your par­ents can’t pay for music school you won’t ever have expe­ri­en­ced the joy of play­ing an instru­ment and the men­tal trai­ning it provides.

All in all I think that your suc­cess in life is deter­mi­ned by too many fac­tors which you can’t influence. It’s nobody’s fault for being born into a fami­ly of upper class whites or Mexi­can immi­grants. And the­r­e­fo­re, ever­y­bo­dy should be able to deci­de what they want to do with their lives.