By Abdul Mondal
Rich and Poor are the two prominent groups, present in every society, either eastern or western. Equality is just a word now that can be used by politicians to impress the audience in order to get votes or it can also become a part of social activists’ speeches to gain the attention. There is no practicality left in this word because we have created a society that is full of biases and differentiation. The rich people are becoming richer and poor are getting poorer with every passing day. Luxuries for rich individuals and problems of poor people are moving in a parallel increase. The poor people are deprived of basic living necessities because of no money in pockets. They don’t have a place to live, sufficient food to eat or proper clothes to wear. And this scenario has given birth to creation of slums. As poor people cannot afford a personal house or a rental place, they opt for slums, tents made by them for living purposes in an open garbage area. According to further definitions, slums can also be those underdeveloped living areas which contain damaged buildings and unpleasant environment. Either way, slums are not appropriate for living but still poor people somehow manage to live there because this is the only option for them.
A life of slum is full of problems and discomfort that not only brings unpleasantness with it, but also makes its inhabitants unacceptable by the elite class of society. The people, belonging to slum life, experience discrimination due to their unhygienic living style and inappropriate appearance. Beside all other issues, children of this poor living system face enormous educational problems. Education acquisition becomes difficult for these innocent poor kids of slums, just because they cannot afford an appropriate lifestyle. We’ll discuss further these educational problems, faced by slum students, in detail to describe the disturbing situation of our society.
Inappropriate Living Environment
The first major problem that contributes greatly to educational disruption of slum students, is the inappropriate environment of slum life. As we discussed above in introduction that people who live in
such scenarios belong to the poor sector and cannot afford a better living style. These poor people are illiterate and involved in serious criminal activities, which means that their presence in slums make the whole environment unsuitable. They conduct such gatherings and parties which are completely bad for students and affect their educational performance. Being occupied by such unpleasant surroundings, students become unable to focus on their education that ultimately lowers their academic performance.
Insufficient resources
Another problem faced by slum students that ultimately becomes their educational issue is insufficient resources. It is quite obvious that people living in slums are poor and unable to afford even basic necessities of life. They cannot support their kids’ education at fullest. Slums have electricity issues due to which many days pass with no supply of electricity and people survive in the dim light of candles because they cannot afford electric generators. Moreover, these poor parents cannot provide their kids with every educational technology such as laptops, calculators, printers and scanners etc. All in all, slum students do not perform impressively like other well-off classmates due to no access to latest technology for better knowledge gain.
Illiterate Family Background
Slum students belong to illiterate family background that means they have no educational
assistance from their elders and need to sort out their all educational confusions themselves. Having an educated family helps a lot in regard to several academic issues because the elders have gone through the phase which you are going through currently and therefore they are able to guide you. Whereas, slum students have no such guidance or beneficial suggestions because their illiterate family doesn’t even understand their educational basics.
Painful persecution at School
The problem of painful maltreatment at school is an educational as well as societal problem. The slum students live in a situation which is unacceptable by the members of elite class and they consider those children to be inferior. This same thought is transferred from elite parents to their kids who eventually victimize the slum students at school by bullying them occasionally. They use abusive language to make them feel inferior just because they belong to an unpleasant slum life.
Poor Education due to bad health
Last but not the least, health is important for every student but those, belonging to slum life face numerous health issues. It is obvious that an unpleasant and dirty surrounding will give birth to several health diseases such as Malaria, Dengue, Fever, Flu and cough. The filthy setting of a slum also brings many skin diseases due to bacteria and fungi everywhere. Because of bad health, slum students perform poorly on educational grounds as they get sick more frequently due to unhygienic surroundings and become unable to focus on their academics.
