Lack of Education and Poverty

[Jason]

In another thread, a poster claimed that "people have too many kids". They accused Communists of ignoring this fact when discussing the causes of poverty.

In this thread, I'm wondering, "What role does poor education play in causing poverty in a capitalist society?".

However, I do believe that many people have no education, because nobody has "given the poor a chance". For instance, Tsarist Russia was highly illiterate because the Tsarist regime didn't view education as important. In today's time, nations like Haiti don't view education and other social concerns to be of much importance. However, Communist regimes have always put education as a "first priority". Hence, once the enviornment is changed, then the society changes.

However, looking at present day "1st world nations", I would say a lot of poverty is simply caused by people who "don't want to study". They go to school, think it's boring or don't care, and rebel. So they dig their own grave. But then again, you have to realize that the population is influenced by capitalist propoganda. This media often glorifies the "fun things" rather than the "idealistic things".

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Why people tend to think of school as being shit? Because it is.

You're made to memorise by rote a whole bunch of shit that's presented in the least engaging way possible. It's far from obvious how a lot of the crap they teach you is actually useful or interesting.

Homework is a whole load of bullshit. If they can't teach what needs to be learned during the hours of school, then why the fuck are they making kids take up the slack for shitty teaching methods?

Then there are all the petty and stupid rules which make no sense if you're a teenager, and have more to do with acclimatising young people to pettifogging regulations than they have to do with actually making school a better place.

It seems particularly bad in the US, where crappy and underfunded public schooling combines with an anti-intellectual culture to make a truly awful environment for encouraging kids to actually learn shit.

I love learning but seriously, fuck school.

[RedAtheist]

Homework is a whole load of bullshit. If they can't teach what needs to be learned during the hours of school, then why the fuck are they making kids take up the slack for shitty teaching methods?

I agree with your post overall, though I would emphasise that schools as they exist now, especially in the US, suck. Suckiness however, is not an inherent quality of public schools and a truely socialist society could potentially have better public schools.

In relation to homework, I agree that homework is bullshit if they expect you to read information in the textbook, which the teacher could go over in class but chose not to (my international politics teacher did this.)

However, there are situations where homework is valuable. The best way to become good at solving maths problems for example, is to practise solving them. The teacher should of course explain how to solve them and not expect you to simply learn the method from the textbook, but students will remember the method better if they practise it.

Then there are the 400 page long novels which are studied in English and Literature, but could not possibly be read in class. I'm glad students at my school were told to read 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' (though to be honest, a large portion of them probably didn't read it)

So I wouldn't dismiss homework altogether, however effort could be made to slightly reduce the dullness of homework. I think I'd be more willing to understand how sulfuric acid was produced if I were presented with a situation where the purpose of producing it was to meet society's needs, rather than to generate profits for a chemical company.

[Quail]

However, there are situations where homework is valuable. The best way to become good at solving maths problems for example, is to practise solving them. The teacher should of course explain how to solve them and not expect you to simply learn the method from the textbook, but students will remember the method better if they practise it.
As a maths student, I can say this is definitely true. When I don't do my homework at uni, it really shows when it comes to trying to apply what I've learned.

So I wouldn't dismiss homework altogether, however effort could be made to slightly reduce the dullness of homework. I think I'd be more willing to understand how sulfuric acid was produced if I were presented with a situation where the purpose of producing it was to meet society's needs, rather than to generate profits for a chemical company.
The problem with homework at my school is that it was compulsory for teachers to set homework every week, even when it wasn't necessary, so quite often I'd end up having to do pointless, time-consuming tasks for no real benefit. I guess that's a problem with having people who aren't teachers telling teachers what they should be doing.

As for the OP, I think this
However, looking at present day "1st world nations", I would say a lot of poverty is simply caused by people who "don't want to study". They go to school, think it's boring or don't care, and rebel. is not really a sign of people not wanting to study or do anything with their lives; I think it's more a symptom of the fact that the education system isn't designed to allow students the freedom to explore their interests. For example, if someone is no good at maths and doesn't enjoy it, it seems ridiculous to force them to take a qualification in it because they're not going to enjoy it, engage with it or get anything out of it. They should have the option to find something that they will enjoy, engage with and actually benefit from.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

In relation to homework, I agree that homework is bullshit if they expect you to read information in the textbook, which the teacher could go over in class but chose not to (my international politics teacher did this.)

However, there are situations where homework is valuable. The best way to become good at solving maths problems for example, is to practise solving them.

And why can't this be done at school? I had much better things to do with my time at that age, like dicking around with my friends and playing computer games, and all throughout secondary education I preferred to "lose" my homework and make excuses for why it hadn't been done rather than actually do it. Any attempt to make me do it would either result in continued refusal on my part, or would result in me purposefully doing it half-arsed as an act of rebellion against stupid demands. The wider interest in learning came later, when I became mature enough to truly appreciate the value of having knowledge and being able to apply it.


Then there are the 400 page long novels which are studied in English and Literature, but could not possibly be read in class. I'm glad students at my school were told to read 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' (though to be honest, a large portion of them probably didn't read it)

Which kind of defeats the point of issuing homework then, don't you think? I read 1984 because I wanted to read it. Had I not been interested in the book and had I also been told to read it by authority figures that I had already come to despise, I would most likely have never touched the damn thing. In fact, I don't even remember any of my reading assignments from school, despite the fact that I was an avid reader at the time.


So I wouldn't dismiss homework altogether, however effort could be made to slightly reduce the dullness of homework. I think I'd be more willing to understand how sulfuric acid was produced if I were presented with a situation where the purpose of producing it was to meet society's needs, rather than to generate profits for a chemical company.

Possibly. But I'm not convinced that homework is not ultimately a shit idea. Also I utterly loathed being given coursework and I never fucking did it. I was fine with doing exams, but when the time came for me to do my GCSEs, I had pretty much totally given up on school.

[Lynx]

People prefer to learn in different ways, and the methods used in our current educational system are only suitable for a minority. If you learn 'by doing' rather than conceptualizing, then focusing on theory may be a waste of your time. If you learn by reading instead of listening, then being forced to endure lectures will likely be frustrating and inefficient.
If you are not a 'morning person' you are at a disadvantage. If you require peace and quiet to study, and are unable to get that at home, then you will struggle with homework. The list goes on, because students are not clones.

Employers do not care if you bring your notes to work, thus memorizing stuff for tests is generally useless outside of school. It only serves to keep students occupied while their parents are busy with work.

It is true that employers have increased their requirements for education and certification. But the sole purpose of this, along with our education system, is to exclude as many people as possible. When unemployment was low, such requirements were fewer.

For all the rhetoric about the knowledge economy, two thirds of jobs do not require anything beyond high school.

[Jimmie Higgins]

In another thread, a poster claimed that "people have too many kids". They accused Communists of ignoring this fact when discussing the causes of poverty.

In this thread, I'm wondering, "What role does poor education play in causing poverty in a capitalist society?".

However, I do believe that many people have no education, because nobody has "given the poor a chance". For instance, Tsarist Russia was highly illiterate because the Tsarist regime didn't view education as important. In today's time, nations like Haiti don't view education and other social concerns to be of much importance. However, Communist regimes have always put education as a "first priority". Hence, once the enviornment is changed, then the society changes.

However, looking at present day "1st world nations", I would say a lot of poverty is simply caused by people who "don't want to study". They go to school, think it's boring or don't care, and rebel. So they dig their own grave. But then again, you have to realize that the population is influenced by capitalist propoganda. This media often glorifies the "fun things" rather than the "idealistic things".

No. The only connection between mass education and poverty is that both are features of the capitalist system. Feudalism needs no mass education because people learned farming skills from their parents if they were tied to the land as serfs; skilled trades learned their skills through apprenticeships and only the rich were actually educated.

Capitalism created the concept of education as we know it. Not to help people get themselves out of poverty, but because mass education and a certain level of skills among a pool of workers is needed in order to have a flexible and interchangeable labor pool for capitalist production. With no education then bosses would have to pay to have someone teach workers to count money in the register - then having mastered math, this worker would be like a skilled laborer and harder to fire or replace because that would be a loss of all that time in developing that skilled worker. Even basic things like responding to a bell and showing up on time and sitting in one place for hours a day are behaviors that are good for capitalist (and military) bosses and are taught in mass capitalist education. So what education looks like in capitalist societies depends on what the capitalist class needs out of the general labor pool in the country (with public education, public pressure and struggle can also influence the shape of the education system). In the 1950s and 1960s, the US needs a much more technologically proficient workforce and so basic math and sciences were emphasized - now with increasing wealth inequality and a larger gap between skilled and unskilled jobs, there's been a return to a much more restrictive public education system and one that is being defunded by the state because the capitalists feel that a skilled workforce is no longer as needed and privite schools in middle class areas can fill the need for skilled professionals fine as it is. Working class kids get repressive schools that teach following inane orders and filling in bubbles to prepare future workers for lives of following inane orders from bosses.

Education has no direct connection to the overal situation of poverty; the organization of production and control of wealth are what cause poverty. While education has become shittier since the 1970s in the US, there is still a lot more acess to education and people going to school than before WWII. In the US, poverty increased in the neoliberal era despite (and because of skyrocketing higher education costs leading to major debts... sometimes BECAUSE OF) increased access to education across the board for working class people.

With the recession, poverty increased sharply - did millions of people suddenly become more uneducated? Or is this the result of the control of hiring and wages by people tied to the profit system and who therefore need to sometimes stop producing as much if they are not getting as high of profits as they want. You know the job creators, and by implication, destroyers.

Lack of education might cause subjective set-backs to rising within the class or attaining petty-bourgeois positions for workers, but this is just the competition of one worker against another and doesn't impact overall wages or available positions.

And also in many countries in the so-called third world, the result of nationalist or anti-colonial struggles in the 20th century was increased education as part of a modernization scheme. But the lack of jobs and skilled positions means that there are some very skilled and educated people who are pushing food carts or driving taxis or whatnot in parts of Latin America or the Middle East. I'd say this was the reason that the USSR-influenced countries placed importance on education: modernizing their workforce from semi-pesentry to a capable working class. But capitalist countries did this as well and the US education model comes from Prussia where they were trying to modernize semi-feudal Germanic provences in order to catch up with England and France.

So while I think it's good that US workers have a public education system, that Cubans have a very good education system etc. I think these systems are still designed by the needs of the rulers, not designed for education itself or the needs of those being educated. I think communist education would be totally different and would be much more incorporated into normal life so that it was an ongoing and voluntary process rather than merely training to cope with the demands placed apon people by society.