World Hunger and Poverty

I could criticize the No Child Left Behind Act. But almost all the people with whom I have spoken about it have expressed strong criticism of it themselves. Namely, they make note of the obvious flaws in taking funding away from failing schools, considering that those schools tend to need the funding the most. I do not want to beat the proverbial dead horse.

While I do think No Child Left Behind does not work and is often counter-productive, I do have some sympathy for the philosophy behind it. Offering conditional funding and threatening to take away funding is the main way the federal government influences local policies of local governments. Additionally, it can be hard to allocate funding for populistic purposes because the taxpayers and general public are rightfully afraid of government spending. So it is easier to get them to accept laws that place more restrictions on funding than laws that just wastefully throw more money at the problem. The problem, in this case, is inefficient, failing schools.

I do not have any clear-cut solutions.

I would consider suggesting making requirements based on methods not on outcomes. Instead of just taking funding away from schools that have too low of standardized test scores, I would suggest making requirements about what the schools need to provide. Namely, I would suggest requiring that all children and students under a local government receive complete healthcare for the schools to get education funding from the federal government.

The healthcare could be provided by a state government, by an even more local government, or by the public schools themselves. It could be provided to all citizens or only to those who cannot afford it on their own. (I would consider charging parents with child abuse if they can afford healthcare for their kids but choose to waste their money on non-essential purposes instead.)

Healthcare would help alleviate the poverty that causes public schools in poor neighborhoods to fail. Also, sick students cannot learn well. Even furthermore, psychological and psychiatric care would help neutralize students’ behavior issues which perhaps is the biggest obstacle for failing schools.

Requiring healthcare coverage for education funding would help alleviate both the education and healthcare problems in the United States without drastically increasing federal government spending and without further federalizing either education or healthcare. If a local government does not want to ensure that all children and students have complete healthcare coverage, then the local government can refuse the federal funding.

I am not dedicated to the idea. I am still thinking it through. So I would love for you to post your comments and replies on my idea of requiring schools to provide healthcare coverage to receive education funding from the federal government. I have decided to post the discussion for that idea in my philosophy forums due to the idea’s very theoretical state. So you can post your thoughts and comments on the idea in this thread at the philosophy forums.

I just read a great commentary by Oliver “Buzz” Thomas in which he refers to education as a path out of poverty.

Basically, Thomas explains that we cannot use old methods to fight poverty in the new world. For example, basic charity and job-training does not work as effectively as it did a thousand years ago. In today’s world, people need education because people get paid based on what they know.

As evidence that we can win the war on poverty, Thomas gave examples of some poor elementary schools that overcame the usual achievement gap, going from failing to ranking in the top 10 percent.

Of course, as I have said in other posts, education starts at home before a kid even enters kindergarten. Additionally, many adults need education.

Education empowers people. It enables them to support themselves and their families. It gets them out of poverty and makes them independent. With education, people do not need charity.

If we provide everybody with enough quality education, I firmly believe we will end poverty.

Squidoo provides helpful information about various topics with pages created by users. One interesting page on Squidoo is the one for Collins College: http://www.squidoo.com/Collins-College

Collins College offers education in creative fields such as game design and film production. The good thing about creative fields is that people who have a career in them usually like it a lot. People can find something that they love and then create in it. People enjoy expressing themselves artistically as well as being productive. That can help them start a good career which will pay them enough to take care of themselves and their families.

I see education as the most important tool we have in ending poverty and creating a better world for all. Education empowers people and it can enable them to overcome the oppression of poverty. Additionally, a more educated society will run itself more wisely.

An important part of helping people avoid or escape poverty is short-term education. People may not have enough money to go to school for a long time, and they need the education to make more money. It’s a catch 22.

http://www.sbcleveland.com/ is the website of a private college in Cleveland that offers short-term training programs. Sanford-Brown College also has 15 total campuses in 9 states.

Not everyone has the time or money to go to school. But it can be a very powerful tool in achieving financial stability.

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of the UK, referred to reading as a ladder out of poverty. He also said, “It’s not just the joy of reading, father-to-son or in the classroom. It’s also the benefits of reading. It’s probably one of the best anti-poverty, anti-deprivation, anti-crime, anti-vandalism policies you can think of.”

I do not trust politicians, but I agree with Brown about this.

On this blog, I often stress the importance of education in ending poverty and hunger. Education empowers people. It gives them the knowhow to manage their own life and the skills to get jobs that pay enough to avoid or escape poverty.

I believe that people learn the most from reading. I believe that reading educates people more than anything. Formal schooling helps people learn, but even that happens as a result of the texts and books that students read in the school.

People usually only go to school for a small fraction of their life, but they can take on personal reading as a lifetime hobby. School costs a lot of money, but reading costs little to nothing. Many people can go down to a library and get a book for free, or they can hop on the internet and read about nearly anything.

As a society, we need to make sure all people have access to books to read. As individuals, we need to keep reading. Also, we need to encourage children to read and help them read. Doing so will greatly reduce poverty, and it will empower the otherwise disempowered.

Often times on this blog I talk about the need to ensure that people obtain education and employment as a means to fight poverty and ensure financial stability. Of course, to make that effective we need to find a specific field of study and work for each person. I thought of this while reading through the Western Culinary Institute website at http://www.wci.edu/ which helps people start a new career in the culinary arts.

Though it is not for everybody, a lot of people want to learn how to cook better and would love to become a professional chef. When such people come across that institute, they may make a life-changing decision to become a chef. Because they love that field, they would probably study hard and work hard at it, and they would probably become more successful.

When trying to help people get education and employment, we need to make sure we find a field that they want to study and a career that they will love. That way, people will put their best into it and get the most out of it.

To help people find fields that they love, we can increase the usage of job fairs and more sophisticated job placement agencies. Additionally, if you know anyone personally who struggles financially or just does not make the most with what they have, try to think of fields and careers that might appeal to them and tell them.

The following is a paid review:

Children born into poverty who escape the poverty trap often do it in part by getting into a good college. Additionally, any person greatly reduces their chances of ever falling into poverty by getting a good education and a diploma from a respected university. For those reasons and more, I often stress the importance of using education in the battle against poverty. Today I have the pleasure of telling you about a service that helps student applicants write great application essays and personal statements to help them get accepted into college.

Admissionsessays.com has been helping students with their admission essays and personal statements since 1996. Their website has lots of information about the application process for colleges, and they offer free sample essays.

AdmissionEssays.com has specialized information on helping students get into law school, business school, or medical school. Of course, they also help with general college and graduate school.

From what I can see, they generally charge a few hundred dollars for an essay, with discount prices for bulk orders. That may seem like a lot, but it looks like less in comparison to the overall costs of education. Additionally, the long-term financial benefits of getting into a good school can outweigh the costs of essay help.

Unfortunately, the less privileged students need quality education the most, but unfortunately they have the most trouble affording it. Our anti-poverty methods need to include helping the youth get education.

I completely believe we can end poverty by investing in education. We do not need any more charity, and charity alone will not end poverty.

Universally providing high-quality education to all children would end poverty. I believe we can best do this with student loans. Of course, the funding for education must include the students’ cost of living during their education years.

With the high-quality education they receive, the students will go on to get jobs (or start their own businesses) that earn them enough to support themselves and pay off their student loans.

Of course, poor adults pose a greater problem, because they generally do not have the time to go to school and have already become used to a lifestyle conducive to poverty. I suggest work-education programs. These programs would require that the person perform a certain amount of work, and in return the person would receive room, board, and education, with the goal of eventually having enough education to support themselves without the work-education program. That type of program would enable poor people to escape poverty and learn to support themselves, which contrasts to just giving poor people hand-outs. The work-education program would promote independence, hand-outs just promote dependence.

You can give me feedback on these ideas and discuss them in my Hunger and Poverty Forums. It’s completely free, and all viewpoints are welcome. Please join and share your ideas about world hunger and poverty.

In recognition of International Literacy Day, I will post today about literacy. Anthony Westbury recently wrote about illiteracy in both the United States and the world. I include an excerpt:

“If You Can Read This, Thank a Teacher,” was the message on a popular bumper sticker a few years back.

There are an awful lot of people, both in this country and abroad, who aren’t able to read such simple messages — 860 million of them to be exact, two-thirds of them women.

On Friday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) celebrates International Literacy Day. UNESCO sponsors reading celebrations and appoints a jury to award international literacy prizes. These include awards for the encouragement of mother tongue languages in developing countries, prizes aimed at developing literacy for rural adults and out-of-school youth, especially women and girls.

So, what’s this got to do with you in rich, well-educated America?

Well, poor reading skills aren’t limited to the Third World. A shockingly high percentage of Americans either cannot read at all or function at a low level of literacy. In technical terms, this second group is described as functionally illiterate. Their numbers include both United States-born natives and immigrants, but around 20 percent of the population is functionally illiterate.

Common sense tells us of the connection of illiteracy to poverty. To escape poverty, poor people need an entire quality education that includes job skills and job training. Both education and job skills require literacy.

While we have to also address adult illiteracy, we can recognize that providing universal quality education to children would have eliminate the problem all-together.

We have to find a way to provide quality education to all children, and I doubt the government can do that due to its bureaucratic immobility and funding problems–taxpayers will always give government school system’s budget problems. I suggest using privately-funded student loans and private schools to provide quality education.

Today I want to highlight the relevancy of literacy to poverty. Obviously, illiteracy leads to poverty, because illiterate people cannot get good jobs. In fact, 43% of people with the lowest literacy skills live in poverty.

Unfortunately, illiteracy still plagues society. For example, more than 20% of adults in the United States read at or below a fifth grade level, meaning that they read far below the level needed to earn a living wage. The National Adult Literacy Survey found that over 40 million Americans age 16 and older have significant literacy needs.

Almost nobody would choose to remain illiterate and poor. We need to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to get an education, and thus get a job that pays them enough to survive comfortably. We can do this fairly through student loans.

Individually, we can each help promote literacy in our own community. For example, we can volunteer at libraries, or host youth book clubs.