Literate but Homeless?

A popular politician recently said that education is the passport from poverty. Many popular press articles on adult literacy explicitly cite illiteracy as a cause of poverty. Unfortunately such assumptions have been nothing but erroneous and pervasive. Such  reasoning only focuses attention and energy on illiteracy, instead of the circumstances which illiteracy flourishes. And it blames the victim.

But what happens when someone like the man in the picture stops us in our tracts? Do we reach a dead end? I have seen his man many times wandering through the streets, swearing at the wind, sleeping on the pavements and benches along his way. But one afternoon, I came across his reading this magazine, holding it upright, without glasses (how many of you are wearing glasses to read this right now? hmm.. myself included) And that's the problem with us! We train our perceptive powers into thinking that homelessness and illiteracy are a cause and effect relationship. However a more accurate description is CORRELATION. So bloggers, the next time we see someone socially displaced, let's not stigmatize. Give him/her a chance to be believed in.     Let's remember this picture and give them a second thought. Let's not conclude that they are merely a victim of circumstance, but they are just like us....humans!