Overcoming Poverty
By Lilia Reynoso
Every person knows that poverty cannot simply be fixed by giving to the people the opportunity to access to material goods, it is not enough! This problem demands deep and constant actions that go beyond the material goods, giving that the consequences of this problem break through the body and the spirit of the people who are victims of the situation. What I want to explain is that poverty is carried inside; it goes inside of the people under this condition to control their feelings, attitude, humor, aspirations, and behavior. Poverty can create some kind of limits to the people, because of their condition they will think that they are not able to do certain things (Raphael, 2011). Then, in order to eliminate or even reduce this problem we need to remove it from the roots of the people.
We need to give them access to the source of knowledge, information, culture, education, but not to any kind of knowledge or education. A method to stop and eliminate this issue can be an alternative educational model that creates free citizens, independent persons, capable of thinking for their own. This is an educational project that gives people the power to think critically, with the purpose to make them go away from the fads, the routine practices and the established order, because all of this makes them simple insensible instruments of unworthy causes. Everyone knows that in this days having a degree does not guarantee a work, and one of the principal things learned in the school are not only math or spelling, but also ethics. Here is where I justify the need for a better civic education, which can help us, the citizens, to be better persons. As I mentioned before, the educational direction that has been established in our education system is seeking skilled individual form to perform tasks, what has succeed as the meaning of education is the job training. It has been understood that education is simply to instruct, and that the objective of college is simply to give professional qualifications for people to be part of the work force. But by this method we only will be continue creating citizens with lees capabilities to overcome the real problems in the world.
We need to understand that education needs to be flexible, always on invention, and oriented to create free self-sufficient people. That is why everybody who is a part of the community need to be able to learn from the past, to be adaptable and to gain knowledge of the new tendencies and the ways of thought, to look forward, and also to recognize the significance of education, and the responsibility that everyone has in the construction of a new world, where justice, democracy and freedom can succeed.
My policy change goes to educational system in the US, and is to form citizens capable of sharing what they have; citizens willing to help others, citizens determined to confront the abuses committed against the weak, citizens determined to fight for justice, citizens concerned for their community, their society, their country, rather than for themselves. These statements need to be communicated in a bigger spectrum, for sure we need to start with something, we would need to have this in the educational bill to make it happen and I hope to make this policy change a new proposal for the educational system and some day to have it in the standards of the education.
Lilia Reynoso is an undergraduate student at UTEP who has been advocating about poverty since fall 2011
References(n.d.). Reducing poverty. [Web Photo]. Retrieved from http://progressivestand.com
Raphael, D. (2011). Poverty in childhood and adverse health outcomes in adulthood. Maturitas, 69(1), 15-21. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/
UNICEF. (2011). Unicef's work. Retrieved from http://www.unicefusa.org
