Quality Education for All: The Poor as Our Teachers?

“Learning to listen to those in extreme poverty requires great humility. They have so much to tell us, much more than we imagine.” This quote is from an interview by Father Joseph Wresinski with Joseph Sané in Dakar, Senegal, on November 20, 1987. A month earlier, on October 17, Wresinski presided over a gathering of 100,000 people from all backgrounds and continents on the Human Rights Plaza in Paris where the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed. A commemorative stone was unveiled, stating: “Wherever men and women are condemned to live in extreme poverty, human rights are violated.  To come together to ensure that these rights be respected is our solemn duty.” 

A Catholic priest, Wresinski founded the International Movement ATD Fourth World as a non-confessional, inter-denominational non-governmental organization that works today in three dozen countries. He passed away a few months after the October 17 gathering, but the date was later adopted by the United Nations General Assembly as the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. It is celebrated to promote understanding and dialogue between people in poverty and wider society. The theme for the Day this year is Decent Work and Social Protection: Putting dignity in practice for all.

One of the worst forms of extreme poverty today remains the lack of quality education for children who live in households marked by extreme poverty. In the context of sub-Saharan Africa, we are not talking here of “learning poverty”, defined as whether a child aged 10 is able to read and understand a simple text. Most children in Africa are unfortunately learning poor according to available estimates. But some children are in a much worse situation than others. Most children in extreme poverty are not even able to go to school. The data suggest that 250 million children today are out of school globally. In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of children out of school increased by 12 million between 2015 and 2021. The consequences are severe, ranging from lower expected earnings in adulthood to higher health risks, and for adolescent girls, being married as children and having children too early are additional risks. 

Beyond a lack of income, Wresinski understood that the extreme poor suffer from deep-seated forms of social exclusion, and this is where there is a difference between poverty and extreme poverty: “Poverty, material deprivation, oppression inflicted by those who have power are hardtop bear. What is truly insufferable, however, is being despised and continuously reminded that one is an inferior and utterly useless being.... A person in misery suffers an unbearable situation, being considered negligible or, worse, a harmful being who should never have been born, while deep inside he still knows he is a person.“ Children not going to school today face a much higher risk of being in extreme poverty in adulthood, and of being seen as a burden by their community and society instead of an asset. 

The subtitle for this blog is “the poor as our teachers.” What does this mean? One of Wresinski’s deepest convictions was that the very poor could be our teachers. At a foundational level, he argued that “those living in poverty are the very source of all human ideals. It is through injustice that humanity discovered justice; through hate, love; through contempt, dignity; through tyranny, the equality of all human beings.” At a practical level as well, he argued that we could and should learn from the poor about what extreme poverty means and how to end it, including in matters related to quality education for all.

To learn from the very poor about practical ways to end extreme poverty, Wresinski’s organization piloted the “merging of knowledge” approach. As noted on the webpage describing the approach, “this inclusive technique helps people facing extreme poverty and social exclusion dialogue with policy makers, business leaders, social workers, and teachers. The goal … is to overcome differences in speaking and thinking…. [and] create spaces where people in poverty can openly share their thoughts. Most importantly, they do this as equals with researchers. This breaks down the sort of unequal relationships between researchers and subjects that traditionally define academic work.” ATD Fourth World has produced guidance on the approach. It has been used in a wide variety of settings, including the Hidden Dimensions of Poverty research project with the University of Oxford, a training program with the Belgian Child Protection Agency, and a research project on Education for All in Tanzania.

For those interested in this approach, in observance of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, UNESCO’s Management of Social Transformations (MOST) is organizing a roundtable on the Merging of Knowledge approach (you can register to participate online). A panel will bring together key stakeholders, including academia, ATD Fourth World members, and policymakers. Despite recognition from prestigious universities, the Merging of Knowledge approach still faces challenges in being integrating ex-ante into the development of poverty reduction policies. Merely consulting with excluded communities is insufficient; genuine participation from the outset of policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation is needed. As the poor can teach us, inclusive engagement is essential for policies to be inclusive and have a better chance of having a positive impact on the lives of people in extreme poverty. This is also true in matters of education.