With the current economic crisis sweeping the financial world, the subject of this year's Blog Action Day could be hardly more appropriate. Admittedly my understanding of the current situation is far from complete, mostly due to the fact that I have great difficulty engaging with the subject (of the economy), which appears to me to be something of a very badly written fiction bearing no resemblance to reality or to the makings of a real and believable world. A similar feeling is upon me when I watch Question Time, as though I were a being from another planet, curiously witnessing the ways they go about their lives on Earth, but knowing that nothing I will see will hold any inspiration for improving the lives of those in my own world. So it is fortunate that this article is not to be about the economy, but about poverty; a subject with which I can engage, and which it is important that we understand, and in doing so begin to formulate some way to first alleviate and then eradicate this devastating wickedness.
A glance into The Concise Oxford Dictionary may start us off along our path; and there we find:
poverty /ˈpɒvətɪ/ n. 1 the state of being poor; want of the necessities of life. 2 (often foll. by of, in) scarcity or lack. 3 inferiority, poorness, meanness. 4 Eccl. renunciation of the right to individual ownership of property. [ME f. OF poverte, povertι f. L paupertas -tatis f. pauper poor]
Definition courtesy of the Concise Oxford Dictionary
It may be the case that when the word 'poverty' is heard or read by a person, they invariably apply the first definition that the dictionary there provides - that of 'the state of being poor; want of the necessities of life' - and have images of thirst, starvation and stark environment before their eyes. Of course, this is a considerable aspect of poverty, but due consideration must be made to the second of the dictionary's definitions - 'scarcity or lack' - and to what, besides the aforementioned necessities of life, this can be applied. Some years ago, concerns were voiced by Tessa Jowell over what she called 'poverty of aspiration', describing it as being 'as destructive to well-being as material poverty'. I could not agree more, and it is these two types of poverty that this article will try to address.
Education could be considered the main culprit of both forms of poverty. Let us take the first form - the 'want of the necessities of life' - and first outline of what exactly those necessities consist. This article on Wikipedia states the traditional list of basic needs as containing 'food (including water), shelter, and clothing', with many modern lists appending 'sanitation, education, and healthcare'. It can readily be understood that, without sufficient education, neither food, shelter or clothing could be contrived; each respectively requiring the knowledge of hunting, farming and nutrition (knowing how to get, to grow and what it's safe to eat), building and tailoring. And then for sanitation, education and healthcare, education is then required for one to understand their need for each of them, and where to find them.
As for 'poverty of aspiration', education is here required to allow a person to strive for high achievement, to let them see the possibilities of greatness they may have to offer. People's attitudes must need be changed if they don't have this aspiration, and if they wish to be fulfilled.
But education has some other things to fight against; it isn't just these necessaries, these basic needs that it can conquer, and it isn't only this which causes poverty. The planet and its inhabitants are not just at the mercy of its basic needs, these ones aforementioned, but rather man has made in all its wisdom a means to further propagate poverty: this being capitalism. Or, rather, the simple existence of money, which stops us in our tracks when trying to fulfill our real basic needs. It is a cause of both the poverties of our necessities and of our aspirations. Firstly, for a want of money we may start to starve, and in doing so head out to get a job and find some. But this job we may be doing might have very little to offer us, except the means to gain our needs; and in this offering us so little, our aspirations (if we had any beforehand) are quenched, and we are left in a perpetual cycle of needing the cash to live, while needing to leave to fill our aspirations. But here is where education can help: with the knowledge of how to contrive our basic needs ourselves, independently, and completely, we can alleviate and all but eradicate our need for money. And in discovering this knowledge, we can pass it on to others, and in turn they pass it on, and so the world becomes complete and prosperous.
Greediness and jealously are attitudes which must be ridded, in order that poverty can be eradicated; and to that end, education is required. But perhaps all the education in the world couldn't save a soul, and maybe the entire restructuring of this global world is needed if we want to remove poverty, and ensure the happiness, not of the few, but of the entire population.
