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Shocking!

This just in...

Education educates people!
When the stove is on, it is hot!
When a human and a vehicle intersect at high speeds, the vehicle will win!

Stay tuned for more shocking news here on Obvious TV! Your source for everything obvious!

To be fair, the split wasn't educated/uneducated. It was wealthy/disadvantaged.

Yes, there is also a correlation between socio-economic status and general levels of education, but that wasn't previously thought to have a measurable effect till later on in a child's scholastic career.

And to address your original question, the reason these studies are funded is to show where the gaps are so future money can be directed into fixing the problem.

To be blunt, there will ALWAYS be poor people and there will always be rich people.

Throwing money at the "problem" won't erase it. So long as we have money, the "problem" will always exist. It's still painfully obvious no matter what they're looking for.

Why not pull up a study showing that "rich people drive nicer cars than poor people", I'm guessing your results would be about the same as the education study.

It might suck for the less-rich, but the fact is (no study needed) that people who have money can buy better stuff... even education. Income redistribution to "eradicate" poverty isn't the fix.

I'm not suggesting income redistribution to eradicate poverty. I am saying that all children regardless of their start in life and what their parents earn deserve to have a basic education.

Some of the guys I'm currently working with can't read or write. They technically left school when they were legally allowed to (16 in the UK), though their attendance prior to that date is debatable, but somehow they managed to make it all they way through unable to even write their name on a piece of paper let alone do basic sums such as five plus five equals ten. It's no coincidence that the guys who come through the doors of our office with the worst problems come from the most deprived areas of my city.

It's not much but if you fund just one program that enables health workers to go out to all new born children in a neighbourhood and give them (their parents) a starter pack of books and some basic information, those children will be better placed when they do get to school. It doesn't take a lot to turn a kid off from learning but it doesn't take much to hook them into it either.

And how do you get funding from the government for such projects? By doing studies that show the problem and coming up with ways of possibly plugging the gaps.

I'm not saying it's the solution. Education in the UK is a chronic mess only made to look better by comparison to certain districts in the US. But you do the best with what you are given and, currently, we have a system that's patchy at best. So you do what you can to help those who need it most. The wealthy and fortunate can bugger off to expensive private schools and have the best education money can buy.

*disclaimer - I had one of the best educations money can buy but I was lucky enough to 1) live next door to such a school and 2) be bright enough to earn a full academic scholarship. Plus coming from a background where education was valued. "There but for the grace of god" isn't an excuse to bury your head in the sand - it's a reason to roll up your sleeves and help others who WEREN'T as lucky as you were.

I think a lot of it needs to be focused on the parents rather than the children.

You can DROWN a kid in brightly colored books and learning materials but if their parents lack the drive, they're not going to pass that onto the kids.

I've never understood how a person could allow their child to drop out of school.

I'm not saying that research SHOULDN'T be done, I AM saying that it says a LOT about government that the results of this study had to be FUNDED for them to even SEE the results when the average person on the street can see them without a shred of research.

Uh. Cas pretty much has this covered. But there was a bit more to it than that RightOn. And you're "analysis" of the obviousness of the results is flawed to the max.

First off, the study showed that the disadvantages occur before their educational career even begins. That is what the study is found, and is not necessarily "obvious" at all. I come from a severely poor family -- my Stepdad has just been declared bankrupt, and we are about to remortgage the house for the third time -- yet I came out ok.

Sure, rich kids generally get better educations, but to blanket all poor kids as uneducated swines is ridiculous, and I take a small amount of offense to that.

You can DROWN a kid in brightly colored books and learning materials but if their parents lack the drive, they're not going to pass that onto the kids.

Complete horseshit. Plenty of kids succeed despite their parents.

Why not pull up a study showing that "rich people drive nicer cars than poor people", I'm guessing your results would be about the same as the education study.

Rich people and expensive cars is a direct correlation. Poor kids and a bad education is not. That's a terrible analogy. Being poor doesn't stop me getting a good education if I want one, but it does stop me getting an expensive car whether I like it or not.

I AM saying that it says a LOT about government that the results of this study had to be FUNDED for them to even SEE the results when the average person on the street can see them without a shred of research.

The average person can also see clear as day that the shifty black dude on the street corner is dealing drugs. No one's going to throw him in jail without proving it first.

To fix a problem you have to prove there's a problem to begin with, and word of mouth is not sufficient evidence. And in this case, they were investigating the extent of the problem, not revealing it.

You're way off base here, man.

Talk about obvious, anyone got a link to this study, or do my eyes miss the obviousness of it?

estarla: The story as the Guardian reported it, with a link to the report at the bottom.

Wow, way to put words in my mouth man... sure my analogies may be crappy but I am not claiming that 100% of all poor people are "uneducated swine" either.

There are always exceptions to the norm... a BIG contributing factor to being uneducated IS the parents and it's been shown in study after study.

You can grow up poor, and be told over and over again how to succeed and be fed nothing but positive 'juice' and come out on top but those aren't normal occurances. I've seen numerous times the parents who teach their kids that they're poor/uneducated because the SYSTEM was to blame and not themselves. (Not that THEY are the source of 100% of their situation)

I've wanted to seriously rip into parents before for telling their kids a pile of horse squeeze about how "the man" is to blame for ALL of their problems.

You need to study even the obvious things in order to have support for arguments for or against them. Studies such as this provide more than a conclusion- they provide evidence and statistics. Without them we just have assumptions and stereotypes; with them, we are closer to concrete fact.

Thanks for the link, Rich.

Blaming The Man for everything is one thing, but acknowledging the disadvantages children are born into is another. I know this has less to do with England and Scotland than with Africa (though African and other Third World countries were mentioned in the study), but I really think it's important to recognize that the "systems" people are born into really are unfair. Also, that people who are making a decent living who can do something aren't doing enough.

I think that it's remarkable that the study mentions the age of three. It's not even bordering upon school-age. I happen to be reading a book called Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, and a statistic in that book I found particularly startling was that families in Third World countries can't even feed their children . Since ~95% (I believe it was) of all brain development happens between the ages of 0-2, and no one in the Third World can even come close to feeding their children enough to nourish their physical development much less their mental development, they are essentially doomed the rest of their lives. Their brain can't even retain anything a decent education would teach them if it were to miraculously become available.

You're right estarla and something SHOULD be done about it...

The problem is, the "rock star" solution many seem to be wanting to employ is just as ridiculous as allowing people to die of starvation in the first place.

Many of these destitute afreas of Africa etc are run by feirce tyranny and as such "throwing money" at the problem like Bono preaches just ends up buying the government Ferrari's.

There has to be a better way than what we're doing now.

RightOn, I hear you about being untrusting of the organizations who supposedly act in the poor's interests, while pocketing a large percentage (or all of it).

I've been looking into direct microloans. While corporate financiers have gotten into such microloans but rationalize a ~50% or more APR because Third World loanees have no credit (duh), Kiva.org is one site where we can loan directly to Third World entrepreneurs. They go through language training and business education to make sure their business plans are lucrative, and once they pay that off they can apply for bigger loans. It cuts out the middle man and has been profoundly gratifying for me. We can loan as little as $25 at a time, and spread them out amongst business owners in Cambodia, Tanzania, Tajikistan, etc... You basically impact entire, multiple generations at a time.

I've seen a lot of instances where microloans show GREAT promise.