Education is the key toward success and the tool to stop the cycle of poverty. However, poverty itself hinders the delivery of meaningful educational outcomes by limiting the access and opportunity of the poor for learning growth and development. Equitable solutions through the interventions of the school and the government are needed to alter the negative impact of poverty on education. The paper examines this issue by reviewing literatures and provides recommendations for future actions.
“If education is purposely designed to increase the quality of life, then why do poor students fail?”
INTRODUCTION
Poverty is one problem that continues to persist despite the hard struggle that the government has to put up with to eradicate it. It is seen and felt on the streets, homes and even in schools. What poverty does is limit the educational attainment of people and hence maintain the seemingly endless cycle that keepsthe poor living on subsistence. This paper reviews local and foreign literaturesto discuss the effects of poverty on the educational achievement of students.
Specifically, this paper examines: 1) the concepts of poverty and education; 2) mechanisms through which poverty and education affect the child; and 3) recommendations to alleviate the negative consequences of poverty and promote universal education. This paper addresses the effects of poverty on educational outcomes by including findings and recommendations from local and foreign studies.
The Poverty Line
As of the first trimester of 2013, poverty incidence among Filipinos was estimated at 24.9% and subsistence incidence was at 10.7%. 1 With apopulation of 97,484,000 set at the end of 2013 and is expected to hit 100 million by the third trimester of 2014, these percentages only mean that there are about 24,900,000 Filipinos who cannot buy a basket of basic goods. Out of this number, about 11 million belong to households which live in extreme poverty and are deprived of basic human needs such as food, water, clothing, sanitation, health care and education.Relating these proportions to the 23 million Filipino students enrolled during SY 2013-2014, about 5.7 million of them are living below the poverty line and about 2.3 million arelucky enough to be wearing a nice pair of slippers in going to school.
DISCUSSION
Education Against Poverty
Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery. — Horace Mann, 1848.
No one can deny the importance of education. It provides both children and adults with valuable knowledge and skills (Figure 1) that are necessary to give people a lasting foundation to help them improve their own lives2 and it is acknowledged as the best protection against poverty.Education can change lives and it can stop the stubborn cycle of poverty. Whoever possesses formal education has a better chance to obtain access to the economic system and is socially more independent and able to nourish and protect their family.3,5Likewise, people with higher education have higher earnings, better health and are less likely to break the law.4,5
Poverty Against Education
Education has been envisioned as the great equalizer, able to mitigate the effects of poverty on children by equipping them with the knowledge and skills they need to lead successful and productive lives.5Unfortunately, this promise has been more of a myth than reality. Despite some periods of economic and education progress, the achievement gap between the poor and the rich exists and continues to grow. Our society has come to a time when family income appears to be a determinant of educational success.5,6
The gap between the rich and the poor with regard to learning outcomes in basic education is real and huge.7Children from low-socioeconomic status (SES) households and communities develop academic skills more slowly compared to children from higher SES groups.8There is a significant difference between the problem solving skills of students when grouped according to their socioeconomic status.9 Furthermore, SES affects the ability of children to learn10 and lower socioeconomic students often display difficulty with language skills and struggle with reading.11
The correlation is clear. Poor academic performance is related with lower household income. Evidences even suggest however that it is not just a mere correlation but is actually causation.7 Poverty causes lower student achievement (see Fig 2). It is a significant factor negatively influencing the delivery of appropriate and meaningful educational outcomes.
The Culture of Poverty
Exposure to tall urban tales fueled by how fiction and television depict low SES areas haveled us to believe that poor people havea unique way of living or a culture exclusive only of their own. Poverty has been associated to violence, drugs, crimes, laziness and others (Fig 3) which, misguided as they are, dictate how wetreat poor people in the society and even in schools. Researches however stated that the culture of poverty does not exist.
Paul Gorski (2008) concluded that this culture of poverty concept is constructed from a collection of smaller stereotypes which, however false, seem to have crept into mainstream thinking as unquestioned fact. He further enumerated several misconceptions that are associated with poverty.
MYTH:Poor people are unmotivated and have weak work ethics.12
The Reality: Poor people do not have weaker work ethics or lower levels of motivation than wealthier people.12,13,14In fact, most poor people wake up early in the morning and stay up even late at night doing two, three or four jobs. The desire to survive and the hope that someday they will get out of poverty are what motivate them to do so and to continue doing so.
MYTH:Poor parents are uninvolved in their children’s learning, largely because they do not value education.12
The Reality: Low-income parents hold the same attitudes about education that wealthy parents do.12,15,16It may be observed that most low-income parents are unable to attend school meetings or even assist their children on their school works. However, this does not necessarily mean that they value education less. In fact, poor parents constantly remind their children to give importance to their studies so they will not end up like them. The reason that poor parents are not able to fully provide assistance to their children’s school works is because they cannot.This may be because their background knowledge limits their capability to do so or because they are too busy trying to earn money by doing multiple jobs just to have both ends meet.
Why Poor Students Fail
Differences in values and behaviors among poor people are just as great as those between poor and wealthy people.12Poor students achieve less in school neither because they are less motivated to learn nor because they are lazy. They hold the same value toward education like most people do. They have dreams, ambitions and high hopes for the future.
“Lower socioeconomic status ultimately contributes to lower academic performance and slower rates of academic progress.Moreover, students in lower socioeconomic communities are more likely to exhibit behavior-related learning problems because they feel as if they do not belong in school due to their working class background. These feelings of loneliness and inadequacy often influence the decision to drop out for many students. Additionally, as low socioeconomic status students become aware of high college tuition fees, they often lose the motivation to perform well due to their inability to pay for higher education, ultimately affecting the influence of socioeconomic status on student achievement.” 11
Generally, why poor students fail is because they lack access and opportunity.7The differencebetween the capabilities of wealthy and poorpeople is obvious (Figure 4). Our society recognizes the importance of education and believes that education is for all. Hence, in the eyes of the law, the wealthy and the poor have equal rights to pursue education. However, those belonging to the upper socioeconomic group can easily gain access to different educational instruments such as technology and thus have greater opportunities to benefit from educational instructions. The poor, on the other hand, not only lack immediate access to such instruments but likewise have lesser opportunities for greater learning outcomes. The wealthy send their children to prestigious schools while the poor can hardlyeven afford free basic education and bring their children to public and crowded schools. The school systems in low-SES communities are often under resourced, negatively affecting students’ academic progress.17
What We Can Do
“If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.” – Kuan Tzu
The constitution ensures the right of every Filipino to education. Free basic education is offered to all to provide equal access to educational resources and equal opportunity for learning growth and development. Various programs were developed such as the 4P’s (PantawidPamilyang Pilipino Program) and the ALS (Alternative Learning System) to bring education closer to the poor. The K to 12 curriculum is purposely designed to provide learners further educational access and opportunity to enhance college and livelihood readiness.
However, these attempts to alleviate the effects of poverty on education, well-intentioned as they may be, are still bound to give frustrating results.Drop-out rates will continue to drop us out, street children will keep coming back to the streets and out-of- school youth will again be out of the school. The poor will continue to academically fail and the cycle will not cease to a halt unless the difference between equality and equity in educational access and opportunity is clearly understood.
The disparity between equal and equitable education can be distinguished upon examining figures 4 and 5. To achieve equitable education, it must be considered that sending our students to
school and keeping them in there is not just the responsibility of the family. This should be seen as the duty of the state and the school itself being an integral part of the state. The government has to appropriately intervene, however it may cost, to give the poor the necessary support to gain access and opportunity toward educational success.
CONCLUSION
It has been established that education is needed to stop the cycle of poverty and produce outcomes beneficial not only to the individual but to the society in general. Education provides knowledge and skills needed to ensure survival and a high quality of life.
The law provides equal rights for each individual to pursue education. However, poverty itself hinders the direct effect of education by limiting the access and opportunity of the poor toward learning growth and educational success. To compensate for such negative influence, the government, with the help of the school, should provide equitable solutions to counter the effects of poverty and ultimately stop it in its cycle (Fig 6).
RECOMMENDATION
Equitably and Adequately Funding our Schools5. School fund should not be based on enrolment alone. It should likewise consider the necessity of the school and the community. Schools should have the capability to provide poor students access to different educational instruments which the wealthy can afford. The school and the community together should have enough resources to bring and keep out-of-school youth inside the classroom and even provide poor students with transportation and food.
In the fight against poverty, the best economic decision thatcould be made is to equitably fund our schools to sustain the individual learning needs of all students, and to equip our classroomsto provide learning that is at par with international standards.The best political decision, on the other hand, is to bring all our youth inside the classrooms and keep them there.
Early Interventions.Equitable education should start by providing high quality pre-school learning.“Early educational intervention can have substantive short- and long-term effects on cognition, social-emotional development, school progress, antisocial behavior, and even crime. A broad range of approaches, including large public programs, have demonstrated effectiveness. Long-term effects may be smaller than initial effects, but they are not insubstantial. These findings are quite robust with respect to social and economic contexts. Early educational intervention can improve the development and adult success of disadvantaged children in the developing world as well as in advanced economies”. 18
Parenting Education. Before a child starts schooling, he has spent about 5 years of his life under the care of his parents. It should then be considered that such amount of time is crucial in the overall moral, social, intellectual and physical development of the child. Hence, it is necessary that poor parents be properly educated and be made aware of their influence on the growth of their children. The government should be able to provide the disadvantaged parents the necessary knowledge and assistance to properly nurture the children so that they may be school-ready and well motivated to aspire for higher learning. It is proven that parents of children who received such intervention were more emotionally supportive, more verbal, spent more time reading to their children, and were less likely to spank their children.19
Reduce Class Size. Despite the increase of the number of classrooms, public schools remain too crowded to stimulate richer teaching-learning experiences. Research indicates that children in smaller classes achieve better outcomes, both academic and otherwise, and that class-size reduction can be an effective strategy for closing racial or socioeconomic achievement gaps.5,20,21,22,23,24,25
Reduce Segregation. Segregation occurs when a school or classroom activity unintentionally makes a distinctive line that separates those who can and cannot afford. This may include educational field trips, school parties, class projects and others which require payments for participation. Money is one thing which poor people lack. For this reason, the poor are likely to be deprived of the opportunity to explore and learn from social and educational gatherings. Activities of such nature should be minimized and the school should see to it that any school or classroom event will not rob the poor of their right to experience and enjoy learning.
Monitoring and Research. It has to be one duty of the school to keep records of the socioeconomic standing of each student. The school administration, with the help of classroom advisers, has to constantly evaluate the immediate needs of all students specially the poor, and has to strictly monitor the performance of poor students so that necessary and immediate interventions can be done to keep them from failing.
Likewise, further researches should be done on how to lessen the negative impact of poverty in schooling. These studies could focus on discovering and evaluating school practices and programs that can help poor students achieve academic success.
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REFERENCES
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**Front page photo was retrieved from http://outreach-international.org/where-education-thrives-poverty-doesnt
By: Samuel A. Quiroz | Teacher II | Emilio C. Bernabe High School | Bagac, Bataan
