Education: An Antidote to Poverty | EduCeleb
Akintunde Ishola
14th May 2018
Poverty is the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. It has always been a great disaster and an automatic invitation to being unwanted, unloved, uncared for and forgotten by people in the society. The only antidote to such a life is education.
Education is the process or art of imparting knowledge, skills and judgment. It can also be described as facts, skills and ideas that have been learned, either formally or informally.
Education is formal when knowledge is acquired in the four walls of a classroom and it ranges from primary to the tertiary level. Informal education includes skills and knowledge acquired outside the classroom settings.
It could be apprenticeship or entrepreneural classes. Both formal and informal education when engaged with utmost diligence, lead to a better and blissful life.
Poverty is a trending phenomenon in our society today that needs to be dealt with. One of people’s decisions to remain poor is the fact that many are not ready to learn new things and better ways to go about their lives. And by so doing, they remain paupers worshipping at the altar of poverty.
For education to be an antidote, everyone should note that the desire to learn is very important and also that no one is too old to learn.
This is evident in a statement given by a man from Switzerland in 1997 which  that “I don’t use to worry about my illiteracy and the fact that I was not able to send my children to school, as long as we had something to eat, but now, I realize that my children are in trouble for life because they can’t get any decent job if they don’t know how to read and write.”
This statement is a pointer to the fact that with education, you can shun poverty, with education you can be a boss of your own, and with education, you can be out of life troubles.
Unquestionably, the word illiteracy is the number one cause of poverty. An illiterate man or woman is more or less a blind person who always needs guidance to go about their ways.
Old methods can no more be used in fighting poverty in the new world. For example, charity and donations as well as trainings do not work as effectively as they did decades ago.
In today’s world, people need education because people get paid based on what they know. In other words, education empowers people. It enables them to support themselves and their families and it gets them out of poverty which in turn makes them independent. With education, people do not need charity but without education, charity alone cannot save.
Furthermore, there are successful men and women who struggled hard to defeat their distasteful situation with the weapon of education, a name that readily comes to mind is the author of the book, ‘Gifted Hands’ Dr. Ben Carson.
Skimming through this book, it is realized that Ben Carson came from a poor family but the zeal to read and succeed was initiated by his mother who pushed her sons to read and believe in themselves. Going further, he received academic honours for being an excellent student despite his poor background and eventually attended medical school.
Also, the deciding factor for education to be an antidote is to have well planned and constructed educational facilities and structures that can aid learning and mind-opening performances. Both formal and informal education can be merged together to strike a balance in building a well-baked individual who is ready to face life challenges and is willing to emerge strong and successful.
In conclusion, a one-time President of America, Barack Obama once said that “the best anti-poverty program is a world class education.” Therefore, a country that does not invest so much in the education of her citizens is far from success because, not only is education important in reducing poverty, it is also a key to wealth creation.