In the UK alone, in 2021-22 there were 4.2 million children living in poverty, which is equivalent to 9 children in every class of 30 students, and it is one of the highest figures in developed countries.
~ Child Poverty Action Group; House of Commons Library
The extent of the problem is compounded by its complexity. Poverty intersects with different areas of a child’s life, resulting in hunger and malnutrition, ill health, limited access to education and other services, as well as discrimination and exclusion. The pervasive adverse effects of poverty make addressing it a moral imperative, particularly urgent for children in light of the availability of resources to tackle it.
~ Graf and Schweiger 2015; Brando and Schweiger, 2019; United Nations, 2018; UN Report 2019
Education, in terms of schooling, is undoubtedly a crucial factor in relation to child poverty, not only because of its role in children’s development, but also because access to education is widely recognised as important, if not essential, to poverty reduction. In a sense, this already highlights the intersecting normative and empirical dimensions of child poverty as a social phenomenon, and the ways in which educational questions lie at the nexus of different dimensions which are both empirical and normative.
Addressing these questions brings together parents, educators, activists, and academic researchers. Although the interplay of child poverty and education is widely researched by different disciplines, the philosophical questions underpinning it have not received significant attention.
Using this blog, we aim to adopt a cross-disciplinary approach by bringing together philosophers, scholars from different disciplines whose research is philosophically oriented, and practitioners, in order to further the philosophical debate on the topic.
This work builds upon the Seminar Series, which aimed to bring together scholars, experts and students from within and outside philosophy and education, as well as practitioners who have experience of working with children in poverty, in order to further debate and inform practice in this field.
While political philosophers, sociologists of childhood, historians, human geographers, and scholars from other disciplines often research issues to do with children and poverty, there is currently very little dialogue across these different disciplinary perspectives. The Seminar Series offered, we believe, an innovative and timely cross-disciplinary framework for addressing these overlapping concerns, and we hope that this blog can continue to serve this purpose.
Authors
- Lorella Terzi, University of Roehampton, London
- Judith Suissa, UCL Institute of Education
- Elaine Unterhalter, UCL Institute of Education