Poverty and Educational Disadvantage - Essay Example

? Poverty and Educational Disadvantage In different situations in the world, quality of life of an individual influences the different aspects of his or her life and minimises the capability of the people involved. In order to facilitate different activities of people in the world, enhancing their potentials and giving them the most required chances to exploit the environment to attain what they need is inevitable. For this reason, capitalistic system of economy can determine the different ways through which opportunities people have, can improve by engaging them in individual effort to look for the required resources. However, while the view of capitalism from an individualistic perspective is good, in other cases, it will be difficult to differentiate it from the collectivist perspective because of the infrastructures, which are available to promote exploitation of nature. These could be in terms of the prevailing economic condition like poverty levels and educational advantage or disadvantage which influence the opportunities of such an individual. Poverty means a state in which a person is not in possession and ownership of a certain amount of possession or money, which he or she can use to cater for his or her needs (Haugen and Box, 2006, p3). Poverty state implies a state in which people in a society do not have enough materials to meet their basic needs and to lead a quality life in the place of the society they live (Lister, 2004, p7). Some scholars describe poverty as the measure of inequality in distribution of resources in the society within the society where a group has higher opportunities and access to the economic resources than others, who have less than enough. The unequal access to the different resources may be in terms of food, water, clothing and other means of production that can help a person to secure his or her needs (Wagner, 2008, p21). Poverty has two main categories that distinguish people in the society, and which generally apply to different people in the world as well as in a specific context. In one of the categories, a person can identify people who are in poverty from within a context or out of the context in which they are staying. Relative poverty is one of the categories of poverty that imply that a person within a specific context has limited access to opportunities in the society as compared to other people in the society (Espejo, 2012, p43). A person who is relatively poor in one society may not be poor from parameters of a different society in which he does not live. For example, a poor person in a developed country in Europe may not fall in a similar class with a poor person within a developing country in Africa. For instance, for a person who is in a lower class in Britain where he earns some amount of money, though not as much as other people in the same society may not be compared with another person who lacks opportunities in Mali in Africa. This difference prevails because an opportunity in Britain can yield higher economic returns than another opportunity in Mali where poverty is high and the money is required in different sectors of life (Haugen and Box, 2006, p15). On the other hand, a person can be destitute or in absolute poverty whereby he or she lacks the basic needs, which are food, water, clothes, sanitation, health and access to education. In this respect, such a person is poor even if he moves from one state or society to another because he or she lacks the potentials to exploit the opportunities in their or other societies. For instance, a destitute person from Germany, which is a developed country, who is lacking the access to the different opportunities in the economy, is similar to an aborigine in Australia who has no access to opportunities in his or her environment. Absolute poverty implies that the definition given to a condition in an individual is similar regardless of the context of the definition and the person who is defining them because the characteristics of the person are not variable (Crane and Heaton, 2008, p14). Educational disadvantage is the situation in which a person or people lack the opportunities to access education for whatever reason that may emanate from personal incapability, lack of quality of education institutions or other problems of the economy. Through educational disadvantage, a person lacks the access to high quality education institutions that can bring about the improvement of their chances that enhance their life. In this situation, there are different factors that are beyond the control of the person that they affect and this means that leaving the condition will need the intervention of outsiders. The factors that cause educational disadvantage cause the affected individual to fail to attain high level of academic results. This could be failing totally to attain the different set standards or performing below one’s capabilities and getting low grades or in the worst cases, a person may fail to access the institution of education that offer some specific training services (Bichard and Solace Foundation Imprint, 2007, p73). Some factors that cause people to have educational disadvantages include; the quality of opportunities that are available to a person, the health condition of the person and the compassionate factors. In these circumstances, people lack to exploit their different potential to perfect their educational status which would consequently improve their opportunities. In the quality of education opportunities that are available for the individual in the society, the person may be in a good position to perform well in education according to the facilities that are available in the institution where the get imparted with training. In this respect, lack of the required tools and equipment to facilitate training lead a person to perform poorly. Health condition of a person may negatively influence the performance of an individual in the education through spending of a lot of time out of class in seeking medical care. In other cases, a person may have one or more disabilities that cause them to fail to acquire the information that educators give during training. These health problems that can influence the performance may include hearing, seeing, writing and speaking difficulties which prevent the exchange of information between the learner and the teacher (Downes, Gilligan and Institute of Public Administration (Ireland), 2007, p43). On the other hand, compassionate and other conditions that can cause educational disadvantage include the different conditions of that can affect the emotional balance of learners. This can happen in the cases of bereavement, effects of surgery, relocation, divorce, neglect and abuse of the person who is undergoing educational training in a high quality institution or otherwise. In this situation, people may have difficulties to concentrate in class during the training or may fail to attend their classes for the required training because they are away from them or the emotion pressures are too much on them. However, educational disadvantages are different from the personal problems that they can choose to avoid and those, which come from a personal participation in things that may to have a direct negative result (Hanlon and Hayes, 2006, p33). The process of development in any society is affected by different things that may vary from the interior circles of the individuals involved such as their culture and perspective about life and the external factors, which emanate from the society and the environment. For this reason, people it is possible to relate the different possibilities influence of poverty condition on the education of learners in an environment. This is because people have economic status of a person influences the opportunities that people can have and it shapes the ideologies and the perspectives of different people about their environment. These differences manifest in different circumstances in when students are in class and when they are out interacting with others of their in extracurricular activities, which lead to exposition of the individuals in relation to their perspective (Bichard and Solace Foundation Imprint, 2007, p73). Education affects the future opportunities of a person in the different circumstance in that lack of it at the early age reduces the opportunities of an individual in future. This subjects that person to a condition of relative poverty because the opportunities that will be available will go to those who acquired the different opportunities in education and hence are suited to take those opportunities. This means that relative to the different people who are acquired quality education, those who obtained less education will be poor and deprived of economic opportunities (Raffo, 2010, p34). On the other hand, there is a great relationship between the poverty and education from the perspective of the parent to children, in which case, a child of a poor parent may not get a chance to attend a school or an institution of learning. This implies that the opportunities of such a child will lower in the case where people will not access such opportunities they need in that time and in future (Levenstein and Levenstein, 2008, p71). In life, opportunities that are available to individuals facilitate their potential to enter a specific class, socially, economically or even politically. However, these opportunities are enhanced by different involvement in which a person may have in their early parts of their lives and which could have negative or positive impacts. Education is one of the situations which promote opportunities in the life of the people in their future because of the different ability to raise the funds and other requirements to attain it. References Bichard, M., & Solace Foundation Imprint. (2007). Challenging educational disadvantage. London: Solace Foundation Imprint. Crane, D. R., & Heaton, T. B. (2008). Handbook of families and poverty. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. Espejo, R. (2012). Poverty. Detroit: Greenhaven Press. Downes, P., Gilligan, A. L., & Institute of Public Administration (Ireland). (2007). Beyond educational disadvantage. Dublin: Institute of Public Administration. Hanlon, L., & Hayes, N. (2006). Early assessment and intervention in educational disadvantage: Executive summary. Dublin: CECDE, Centre for Early Childhood Development and Education. Haugen, D. M., & Box, M. J. (2006). Poverty. San Diego: Greenhaven Press. Levenstein, P., & Levenstein, S. (2008). Messages from home: The parent-child home program for overcoming educational disadvantage. Philadelphia PA: Temple University Press. Lister, R. (2004). Poverty. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Raffo, C. (2010). Education and poverty in affluent countries. New York: Routledge. Wagner, V. (2008). Poverty. Detroit: Greenhaven Press. Read More