Poverty and Education, Essay Example

Poverty has very far-reaching implications on every state’s education system. This essay illustrates the relationship between poverty and education. Focus will be on poverty as it relates to education in chapter 17 of the novel Great Expectation and as it exists in Rhodes Island today. During the days of Great Expectation, poverty had a very negative effect. In the world that we are living in today, specifically here in Rhode Island, poverty limits educational choices for young people in that they get low quality or no education at all, both at the basic level and at college level.

It was because of poverty that few good education opportunities existed during Great Expectation. The best that someone like Pip could become was an apprentice blacksmith. A girl as brilliant and hardworking as Biddy could only end up juggling between sewing and doing domestic work. The evening school that is mentioned in the novel is described as ‘miserable and noisy’. In such an environment, it is difficult for proper learning to take place.

Today, Rhode Island’s education system faces new challenges. Poverty makes it difficult for many brilliant students to pursue their education beyond high school. They end up in the streets, abusing drugs and doing nothing much with the little education they have already acquired. Public schools do not offer students the best learning environments. Poverty leads to congestion that makes the environment noisy and therefore not suitable for learning. Many students in Providence have to endure temptations to engage in drugs, alcoholism and prostitution, vices that are perpetuated by poverty in this society.

The solution to tackling the effects of poverty on education lies in setting up initiatives that will ensure that education standards are not compromised because of poverty. The programs should be initiated at both governmental and non-governmental level.