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Yvette Perez
English 2010-023
Jim Beatty
06 August 2015
Racism at an Early Age
Every human being goes through a child development process starting from being an
unborn baby and continuing the process in childhood all the way until they become adults. The
first education stars at home and then the education process continues by attending school. We
learned to say our first word at home just like we learned to take at first step at home as well. It is
extremely important that parents start educating their children at home. The world has very
different set of standards when it comes to ethics and children may learn incorrect actions and
prejudices from the society we live. Parents need morally educate their children to prevent kids
from learning ethics by exploring their surroundings.
From the time we are born we begin to go through a process for a way to communicate
which goes from screaming, to babbling and eventually as months go by, we begin to say actual
words. This process is known as language development according to the author Jeffrey Arnett
(192). Maybe we dont remember when we were that young, but from observing other kids I
began to see and understand a bit more about how language develops as one grows. Language
development starts in the nine months that a female is pregnant. When a female is pregnant she
talks and sings to her unborn and caress her stomach where her unborn baby lies. Sometimes as
a response the baby will kick or something of that nature. This is the way babies try to
communicate or at least acknowledges the sound of the mother. When mothers do not talk to her
child the child the baby will not know the sound of the mother. The process of language
development stars when a baby is a fetal and its goes on as the baby gets born and begins the
human development process. This process is really important because it is extremely important
to help children develop this process of development.

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Next, according to the author Jeffrey Arnett cognitive-development approach takes place
during infant life at childhood (147). This is the process when the infants abilities start to change
as years goes by and they start understanding more about what it is happening by their
surrounding (Arnett 147). Children are really intelligent and they can learn how to do many
things just by looking at other kids or adults and repeated their actions. Some actions may not be
the better education for them. For example, making assumptions about other ethnicities is not a
good way to educate children. If a parent is making prejudices of the society most likely his or
her kids will learned from that example and will act the same way. Parents or legal guardians
need to educate your children since they are little and children need to have a way of authority on
their lives. Teach them the difference between wrong and good. A good sense of ethic is to help
others and do not make prejudices of the society. Children can really easily learn bad words at
school. They can also learned to be racist and if parents do not stop this behavior at an early age
then when your child get older it will be harder to change their perspective of racism. It will be
hard because they have been living a life were they taught being racist was good and changing
their minds will not be easy.
Also, maturation comes along and is the process of maturing for example personal and
behavioral traits (Arnett 147). Behavioral traits mean how a person may behave a certain way
(Arnett 147). For example maybe the child is an individual that most of the time is either happy
or sad. The child may have gotten this specific temperament from one of the parents. For
example lets say the child has a bad temper all the time from the father, and then the father may
have a better connection with the kid. This may resolve many problems because the kid will
connect either with the father or mother and will know what is right or wrong to do base on the
parents actions. If parents are a good example to follow then your child will be on the right path
of learning good behavioral actions. A good example to follow will be to never segregate people

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from other ethnicities, being nice with everyone, make new friends and admit making mistakes
and fix them a sun as possible. The book Human Development a Cultural Approach by Jeffrey
Jensen Arnett states how infants use schemes as a construction of reality. Schemes are ways how
they organize and process new information in order words it is the process how infants interpret
new information in to their thinking skills (148). It normal when children organize new
information by sections in their minds. For example children know that hamburgers taste good
but they do not know how much trans fats they have. Another example will be when children
have new friends and they mentally organize their friends by categories from white to black or
from intelligent to unintelligent. Maybe you do not even recognize this way of organizing new
information, but it is because since you were baby you are use to this process and you do not
even notice that you use this process. After years of processing things like this it comes natural to
does it just like being racist becomes something that they naturally do without thinking about it.
The problem is that some individuals do not think about how racist they can sound, this is why is
better to think how you will sound before you say something that may offend others.
In addition, moral development comes along when your parents teach you how to behave
in public (Nairne 114). If you do not acquire a sense of morality when you are young, than you
may have developed it by looking at your surroundings and you may have learned wrong ethics.
In the book Psychology the author James Nairne explains how kids at an early age go through
different moral stages and he shows how important it is that parents teach their children the
differences between appropriate and inappropriate actions (114). By stating that children go
though different moral stages I mean to say that children learned about what consequences their
actions can cause, what social order should they follow, and finally what ethical principals are
important to take in consideration (Nairne 115). Children may learn the wrong ethics if they tend
to do bad actions and parents do not explain to their child what they did was wrong. Children can

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do bad actions by segregating other ethnicities, or by calling others using racist names. Using
racist names can be like spics for Hispanics or wetbacks and beaners for Mexicans. Parents have
to speak up and explain why it was wrong what they said or to do what they did. Parents have to
intrigue their children with the idea that being racist to others may cause you lose your friends or
offend others. If children do not get educate at an early age, then when they grow up it will be
impossible to make them change the way they think. As we get older we try to stay with the
thinking that we already have and we feel uncomfortable changing what we are already use to.
Parents should teach their children ethics before is too late. Parents need to explain to
their children that being racist its something not ethical okay. If kids get taught these lessons at
an early age then they are going to be able to change their way of thinking and have good sense
of ethics. Racism should be something that no one should practice and if a child never got taught
by their parents that prejudices are bad actions they are going to grow up thinking that they are
doing things right because they were never taught about ethics.

Works cited
Arnett, Jeffrey J. Human Development A Cultural Approach. New York, NY: Pearson, 2012.
Print.

Nairne, James. Psychology: fifth edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth publishing, 2008. Print

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