Conceptions of poverty and education.

Abstract

Freeing poverty from the stigma of guilt and shame is an unavoidable development to qualify formative reflection and action. In fact we are aware that, unfortunately, those very formative processes have been and still are the “transmission belts” of these stigmas, and of the contagious propagation of conceptions. These conceptions become practices which, more or less openly, spread and justify greed and the false belief that consumer goods can satisfy human desires. The formative task that arises is to recognize the dignity of poverty and to understand it as a humanizing condition that is continually running the risk of being confused with the sad degeneration of misery. This degeneration also includes the deceiving mirage of gaining wealth that takes away space and time from the pursuit of lifestyles that do not need to exploit either other human beings or the environment.