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Donald Pierce
Grand Canyon University
EDL-807
January 19th, 2014

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Nelson Mandela once said Overcoming poverty is not a task of

charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not
natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the
actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great.
You can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom. Nelson
Mandela knew that poverty was one of the greatest obstacles that must
be overcome for people to succeed. Even the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights of the United Nations states that everyone has the right
to an education. Unfortunately for many people around the world, an
education is still a distant dream.
To help people overcome poverty, many need an education, but
educating the impoverished is an issue that the world as a whole
struggles with. The poverty that will be discussed is not the kind of
poverty often seen within Western nations, but rather in the third world
countries that litter the planet. Across the world, sixty-one million
primary school age children, ages five to twelve, are not able to attend
school (National Center for Education Statistics, 2005). In addition to
this, there are approximately two hundred and sixty-four million

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students that are eligible to attend secondary grades that are not currently
doing so. One hundred and thirty million children in the world are
illiterate. An example of this is in the sub-Saharan region of Africa,
seventy-five percent of secondary school aged children, ages twelve to
eighteen are not attending any school (National Center for Education
Statistics, 2005). In that region, about seven hundred and seventy-four
million adults do not have any basic literacy skills.
The most common reason for this is poverty. Education of
children, many experts believe, is a major key to not only rescuing
people from poverty, but also eliminating the cycle of poverty that
threatens many families future generations (Bradley, 2002). The poverty
of a community is both a very direct and a very substantial barrier to the
local education system. It is estimated that about half of the worlds
population lives on less than two dollars a day (Bradley, 2002). This low
salary lead many individuals and families to prioritize survival over
education no matter the future benefits that education could provide.
When these families are without monetary funds, they are not able to let
their children attend school. Those who might be able to scrape enough

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money together often find that they cannot afford required items such as
books, school supplies, and school uniforms. In addition to the economic
challenges that are faced by the lack of education, those children that do
not attend school regularly are also at risk of not having any access to
clean water, medicine, and proper sanitation (Bradley, 2002). This often
leads to the children being more susceptible to malnutrition, disease, and
ultimately death.
Individuals such as Robert Lynn believe that what would work
best is a free primary education (Lynn, 2005). They also believe that a
free education is not a privilege, but rather a fundamental human right.
However, there are still many countries around the world that charge
fees for students to attend schools which keeps many youth from
achieving their full potential (Lynn, 2005). It is because of these fees, the
rampant poverty, and the inactivity of the local and federal governments
in those areas that children must work a low paying, menial job to help
support their families rather than receive an education. It has been noted
that females are most often the individuals that are kept out of school.
They are often tasked with such duties as doing chores, taking care of

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siblings, and helping maintain the home (Lynn, 2005). These are time
consuming tasks and keep the young ladies from ever having time to
attend school.
Poverty also leads to another reason attending school is not an
option for the children of poor families. This is conflict. Conflicts often
arise due to poverty because those who do not have money are angry at
those with money and power (Bradley, 2002). They often believe that it
is the governments fault that they are so poor. Often crime will also
create conflicts in the area due to powerful criminals fighting for the
pitiful amount of resources available. Whether this is true or not, this can
often lead to conflicts in a region. These conflicts often mean that the
children in these areas are not able to attend school because they were
forced to flee their homes or the trek from their homes to the schools is
too dangerous to make.
In the United States of America, the phrase education crisis is
often used to describe both the lack of funding for the educational
system and also the decrease of students academic success in
comparison to other nations. In the United States of America people find

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many groups or reasons for the lack of funds for schools. Some say that
the teachers unions are the cause because they want higher pay while
others say that the government is misappropriating funds that would best
be served being put towards education. Many say that poverty is not an
issue. However, there are studies that show that students from wealthy
American public school districts normally generate some of the best test
scores in the world. These studies results show that the education
systems problems are not necessarily universal. The studies instead
show that the crisis in the educational system is isolated primarily in the
sections of the educational system that operate in areas that have high
rates of poverty. The studies results also show that the American public
school system is not perfect, but it is not the major problem in Americas
education system. If the problem was just the system, then traditional
public schools in rich neighborhoods would not be performing as well as
they currently do.
In particular, there was a recent study that was conducted by the
Southern Education Foundation. The Southern Education Foundation
cross-referenced the data that other educational researchers. The data

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that they referenced showed that the majority of all public school
students in thirty-three percent of the states in the United States of
America now come from low-income families (Kaushal, 2011). The
research shows that over the past twenty-five years, sixty-six percent of
the achievements of students is directly related to the factors that occur
outside of the school environment (Kaushal, 2011). The most powerful
of these factors is the economic status of the students. The authors of the
study conducted by the Southern Education Foundation stated that they
were not at all surprised that the destitution of students was a factor.
They said that the problem is the same as it is in third world countries.
The families are more concerned with surviving from day to day rather
than the educational success of the students.
The solution that most of the authors, whose papers I read
believe will solve the issue of poverty directly affecting the education of
students is more education. The consensus is that to defeat poverty, more
education is needed. However, it appears that that solution is not
plausible if the families are still too poor to send their children to school.
One way around this is a solution from an organization that calls

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themselves A Dollar A Day (Oracle Education Foundation, 2012). This

organization has figured out the mathematics and believes that if every
family in the world were to be given a dollar a day, then the struggle to
educate impoverished children would be wiped out (Oracle Education
Foundation, 2012). By the organizations estimations, a dollar a day to
every family in the world would help sustain families and allow them to
not only lets their kids stop working so that they go to school, but also
will allow the families to provide better food, water, and medicine for
the children.
Thought this solution may not be considered quite practical at
this time, it does at the very least help address how simple the solution to
this epidemic may be. Of course probably the most important question to
ask is: if any nation was truly serious about fixing the troubled aspects of
their education system, then why are the discussions about education
more focused on funding technology rather than getting more kids into
the classroom? People seem to care more about the newest iPhone,
enhanced weaponry, television shows, and budget austerity then how to

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help those families that need it so they can allow their children to get an
education that will stop the cycle of poverty.
My recommendations to fix the matter would be broken into two
parts. First, I would recommend that schools in areas that have a high
percentage of impoverished families receive the same amount of public
funding as the schools in neighborhoods that possess wealthier families.
The second part of my recommendation would be to have effective
programs that aid those impoverished families so that they can allow and
encourage their children to attend school. These would be my
recommendations for helping to eliminate the educational issue of
poverty so that those like Nelson Mandela might see their word turned
into reality.

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References
1) Bradley, R. H., & Corwyn, R. F. (2002). Socioeconomic status and
child development. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 371399
2) Kaushal, N., Mangnuson, K. & Waldfogel, J. (2011). How is Family
Income Related to Investments in Childrens Learning ? In G.
Duncan and R. Murnane (eds), Whither Opportunity? Rising Income
Inequality and the Uncertain Life Chances of Low-Income
Children . New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
3) Linn, R., Fixing the NCLB Accountability System, Policy Brief 8
(Los Angeles, Calif.: Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards,
and Student Testing, Summer 2005)
4) National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) 2005 Mathematics Assessment (U.S.
Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences
5) Oracle Education Organization. A Dollar A Day. http://
library.thinkquest.org. 2012