雅思范文：穷人小孩前途堪忧

雅思范文：穷人小孩前途堪忧

海外大学教师谢振礼投稿

雅思中国网http://www.ieltschn.com/ 

真题》Children who grow up in families which are short of money are better prepared to deal with the problems of adult life than children who are brought up by wealthy parents.  To what extent do you agree or disagree?

IELTS Essay Example

Created by Jeenn Lee Hsieh

Poverty matters so much for children that the consequences of being short of money tend to linger even in their adult life when coping with a series of ordeals.  Given that a university experience can make a difference, as a rule young people from have-not families will find it more difficult to go through higher education. Such encouraging stories, as told about how some people, moneyless and with little education, become dramatic successes at the end of the day, ought to be regarded as only exceptions to the rule.

First, the rule.  Money being the main issue, it is hard to break down class barriers. This can be seen that class divisions are just as wide these days as they used to be over the decades. Appalling is the fact that young people's life chances are tied to the fortunes of their parents from childhood to early adulthood. In general children born to poor families today face stark inequalities in educational achievement, not to mention other factors like health care and  exposure to violence in undesirable neighborhood.  More often than not, economically disadvantaged children are also more vulnerable to negative influences in the future than are children from better-off families. It is hardly logical to believe that lessons about complexity in life can better be learned only the hard way as if it pays to be poor in the first place as a means to be prepared to overcome life's challenges. The point may be that children brought up by poor parents should sooner be aware of the value of good money which their parents do not have, and the inaccessible price of attending college beyond their wildest dreams.

Exceptions to this rule are relatively few nowadays, referring to young people from very low-income households who actually succeed in working their way by hooks or crooks. Prepared or not, they are being pushed to fight, mostly in vain, against adversities ahead without the security of being engaged in a professional career. The situation is of course different with children from rich families who are lucky enough to be on fast track leading to higher education, among other advantages.  Reportedly only a miserable 10 percent of young people from the poorest fifth of the population go on to university, against as high as 50 percent from the richest fifth, with the remaining 40 percent coming from somewhere in between.  This shows clearly that the poorer is one as a child, the more obstacles one is to meet as an adult.  In short, without being properly educated, children from hard-up families are not likely to outdo children from wealthy families.  Sad but true that life is like a journey that begins badly rarely ends well.

It sounds romantic sometimes to hear fairy tales about exceptional persons that change the rule of the game and make success happen anyway in real life.  However, to think that for simply being in extreme poverty children are therefore better prepared to triumph over the problems of adult life is to ignore the education opportunities apparently not in their favor. And that is exactly why heartening stories about self-made people are particularly worthy of public attention and admiration.