Adult Education and Poverty Reduction.

Adult Education and Poverty Reduction Education is a moral right to those who should be educated and a moral duty to those who should allow and facilitate the education to take place. That is equivalent to saying that education should necessarily result in poverty reduction as a matter of moral imperative. A society that is ravaged by poverty is morally impoverished and can escape the poverty through a certain kind of education (Dame, 1999). Education is a necessary instrument for the attainment of a morally important condition or status—absence of poverty or state of wellbeing. In order to address these issues, this paper will look at scholar’s connection of education and development. Frank Youngman has argued that education is an instrument of cultural imperialism whereby educational measures reinforce dependence by marginal nations at an economic and ideological level. This happens because external researchers provide the knowledge base for developing countries. They set priorities for education when many developing countries for example send their people to the UK and US for training and these people later become policy makers on completion of their studies. For Lalita Ramdas (1999) non-formal education (that includes adult education) has been used by many governments to perpetuate the gap between the rich and the poor. Governments use non-formal education and ignore issues of quality in non-formal education. This serves the interest of governments in that when they provide some sort of non-formal education they can feel good about themselves and point out that they are doing something for the out of school adults while on the other hand they can point out the poor quality of non-formal education a graduate has as an excuse not to reward them.
Maruatona (1995) found that there is a perception that graduates of a literacy program would enhance potential for economic development and democracy, empower, liberate and provide equal opportunities. Even though there was a clear link between literacy and development as well as the above-mentioned benefits, Maruatona (1995) also pointed out that providing literacy alone without adjustment of other social structures will not alleviate poverty nor provide for gender equality. This means poverty alleviation needs literacy as part of the solution even though it is not the whole solution. This is echoed by Akinpelo who argued in connection with continuing education that it should have elements of political and social skills in order for it to contribute to development. on and poverty reduction related? In order to answer that properly a good attempt at working definitions of the terms ‘development’ and ‘education’ is in order. To develop means growth, positive change, redemption, evolution to higher state of being, qualitative and quantitative change. Development can be economic, moral and spiritual as well as material and practical, social and political. Development is not the sharing of poverty but it is the situation whereby people are in a position to realize their fulfillment in all aspects of their lives. For the United Nations economic development is positive improvement in the spheres of health, availability of food, consumption, education, employment, housing, social security, clothing, recreation and freedom (Mwenakatwe, 1971). Education is the proper organization of materials which activates our senses and gives us pleasure. It is the process of humanization and con-scientisation in a concretized manner, about the real nature of humanity. It is a non-neutral, emancipatory/liberating, none domesticating but committed and transformative process by and through which human beings can realize their true person hood (Singer, 1993). Education is groking the reality, essence or being of humanity—‘to grok something is to grasp it: to get the marrow, the inner meaning, the crux, or the gist of it. To get the essence of a communication or sharing so we are able to recreate it in our own language. The linkage between development and education is simply put the fulfillment of human being-hood (development) and the realization or awareness of that fulfillment (education). This clearly suggests an antagonism against or antithesis to poverty. The attainment of genuine development and the completion of education as a process signal as of necessity, the end of poverty. At a micro level poor households have less education levels than rich ones. Children from poor families are under pressure to work as soon as possible. In the current era of HIV and AIDS poor families that are hardest hit do not have access to education because of the prohibitive costs (Singer, 1993). High living standards and poverty reduction were influenced by education, which has a role in determining access to different sources of income. The reduction of poverty can be effected through education, which implies moral, political and social liberation. Some types of education can be used to perpetuate poverty and as such they are not education (Youngman, 1991).

References
Dame F W (1999), Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Adult Education and Revolution Paradigma of Radical, Pedagogical Thought, Berlin and N.Y., Peter Lang.
Maruatona T (1995), Effects of the national literacy program on the graduates in the south east district of Botswana, Journal of the African Association for Literacy and Adult Education, 9, 2, pp.78-90.
Mwenakatwe J M (1971), ‘Adult Education and Social Change’, in Hall BL and Remtulla K (eds) Adult education and national development.
Singer P (1993), Practical ethics (2ND ed), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Youngman F (1991), Cultural Imperialism and the Critical Praxis of Comparative Adult Education.

References: Dame F W (1999), Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Adult Education and Revolution Paradigma of Radical, Pedagogical Thought, Berlin and N.Y., Peter Lang. Maruatona T (1995), Effects of the national literacy program on the graduates in the south east district of Botswana, Journal of the African Association for Literacy and Adult Education, 9, 2, pp.78-90. Mwenakatwe J M (1971), ‘Adult Education and Social Change’, in Hall BL and Remtulla K (eds) Adult education and national development. Singer P (1993), Practical ethics (2ND ed), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Youngman F (1991), Cultural Imperialism and the Critical Praxis of Comparative Adult Education.