Poverty and educational disadvantage (educational inequalities)
Elena Zizioli e Lisa Stillo
Roma Tre University
Poverty and educational disadvantage refers to the impossibility of ensuring that all children and young people enjoy equal opportunities in terms of education, schooling and training, care, and the development of skills and aspirations in an appropriate cognitive and affective context. This definition, reworked by large-scale organizations such as Save the Children (2014; 2016), draws attention to the difficulties involved in applying the idea of equality (Sen, 2010) and the real differences among human beings, i.e. gender, age, background, competences, legitimate aspirations and abilities, economic and cultural conditions and living environments.
The current historical moment is marked by significant deterioration in economic and employment conditions that has produced profound differences, uncertainty about the future and the reorganization of national and local welfare state systems, leading to the emergence of new social needs. The data confirm that inequalities are currently on the rise and are more acute where investment in free, public education has been inadequate.
Although educational poverty cannot be reduced to the economic sphere alone, this phenomenon is deeply linked to economics and calls into question communities. Indeed, the task is to implement inclusive and participatory policies to “create a system” through educational alliances and to foster empowerment projects involving compensatory practices according to the well-known formula of “giving more to those who have less”, working to improve the substantive “accessibility” of educational opportunities by those living in conditions of marginality and social exclusion (Schwartz, 1994).
In Italy, socio-economic inequality is closely connected to geographical inequality: in fact, the areas that experience greater economic and social inequality often lack adequate services and educational opportunities as well.
The condition of NEETs, analyzed and theorized by the RE-SERVES project, calls for an investigation into the phenomenon of inequality and the actions to be taken to combat it. This focus is important because the NEET phenomenon is often cause by the impossibility of breaking the mechanisms of poverty and social exclusion and stems from contexts – family, cultural, economic, and social – that do not adequately invest in children’s potential and their future (UNICEF, 2019).
Riferimenti bibliografici minimi
Sen, A. (2010). La diseguaglianza. Il Mulino.
Save the Children (2014). La Lampada di Aladino.
https://s3.savethechildren.it/public/files/uploads/pubblicazioni/la-lampada-di-aladino.pdf
Save the Children (2016). Liberare i bambini dalla povertà educativa: a che punto siamo?
Schwartz, B. (1994). Moderniser sans exclure. La découverte.
UNICEF (2019). Il silenzio dei NEET. Giovani in bilico tra rinuncia e desiderio.
How to cite this text:
Zizioli, E., & Stillo, L. (2020). Poverty and educational disadvantage. In M. Milana & P. Perillo (Cur.) RE-SERVES project: Glossary. https://sites.dsu.univr.it/re-serves/
