education and poverty

[Michael Shigorin]

On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 08:59:38AM -0500, Shawn McMahon wrote:
> > Oh please don't tell me one needs higher education to plant
> > potatoes.  I have, but it doesn't really help, you know.
> If all one wants to do is plant enough potatoes to feed one's
> immediate family, and tremendous wastage of space per person
> fed isn't an issue, then you are closer to being correct.

I'm not pretending to be correct, it's all quite sad anyways.

> However, if one wants to feed far more than one's immediately
> family, and do so in a sustainable way, then at the very least
> one needs input from higher education, it not that education
> for one's self.

Sometimes space is cheaper than education.

> There is a reason why every heavy-agricultural communitys
> in the US has one or more "extension offices" from the
> agriculture-heavy universities in the state, and there's
> a reason why those have websites and email addresses.

Definitely.  But these are different countries, I've been trying
to parallel that to the difference level I've seen to date
(quite sheer but should not be really comparable to US/SA)
and Eric Dunbar replied offlist with quite a few considerations
regarding what I could happily miss by taking for granted or so
(like parental support of chilren education in both physical and
experience senses).

Hard to tell.  Maybe those idle teens are like what I've seen,
maybe they're not.  So far, I don't think they aren't.  
The aforementioned scammer interview looked rather familiar...

> Unless you're intending for these areas to stop receiving any
> input from the outside world and go back to subsistence
> agriculture and 35-year life expectencies

I just say that it's a lot of progress from idling for e.g.
18 years and getting killed for another purse.  Not that it's
ideal situation period.

> higher education is necessary to make a society that can
> sustain the higher effective birth rates and life spans that
> modern medicine, modern construction techniques, etc. bring.

I've been to places in Ukraine where people live for ca. 50 years
usually.  Seems like not the lack of education but extremely hard
labour and almost missing medical aid is to blame for that.

Sometimes I envy them.

-- 
 ---- WBR, Michael Shigorin <mike at altlinux.ru>
  ------ Linux.Kiev http://www.linux.kiev.ua/
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