EDUCATION FOR POVERTY ALLEVIATION: THE PLACE OF THE HUMANITIES

Education is a tool for personal and societal development and its impacts are felt in all sectors of any society. The gains of education for the individual, is that it inculcates the right knowledge and skills on the individual which give him/her the leverage to seek for high paying jobs that will add value to his/her socioeconomic status. Also, it makes the individual to be a productive citizen. This makes education to be a mechanism for empowerment in order to break the burden of poverty. Poverty is one of the problem that is facing the 21st century with it attendant problems of income inequality, powerlessness, deprivations, malnutrition and increase in crime. It is based on the foregoing that this paper will argue the thesis that for the humanities to play a role in poverty alleviation, its academic programmes must be re-branded to be industries-focus which will give graduates that basic skills to be employable or creators of values to meet the challenges of the 21st century.Thus, in this paper we shall be giving a critical appraisal of education as a mechanism for poverty alleviation and the role of the humanities in achieving this noble goal.