Current Event 8 Education and Health

Samantha Levine
10/20/09
Current Event Eight

On Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 in The Irish Times, based in London, UK, Don Ryan, the president of Ireland’s Teachers’ Union wrote the article Education = Health. This article is about the relationship between education and health. Unlike other countries like the United States, Ireland has not done any exclusive research on how education affects health and life expectancy and the overall connection between the two. Most if not all the local news articles within Ireland have been focused on general education, buildings for schools, and excreta. However, now with the vast amounts of cutbacks in education, the main focus is “…almost exclusively on the benefits of the retention and development of a high quality and inclusive education system in stimulating a revival of the economy and contributing to the social cohesion of the country”, which lead to the discussion of “an equally, if not more, important argument is the detrimental effects these measures will have on the health and life expectancy of individuals and the population”.
It is said that by itself, health behaviors cannot justify how health status differences between the less educated and the higher educated. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) states “Better educated people have lower morbidity rates from the most common acute and chronic diseases, independent of basic demographic and labour market factors. Life expectancy is increasing for everyone, yet differences in life expectancy have grown over time between those with and without a college education.” Many people are beginning to worry because of the vast amounts of cuts. So, a group of researchers “noted in a 2008 Health Affairs article that the education- related gap in life expectancy has grown considerably in recent years.” This is not the best of news, yet the government is still standing strong in its beliefs.
Ireland’s government and policymakers are believed to appear unimpressed by the various arguments against the cutbacks to education. In fact, the government, “in attempting to rectify the country’s economic mess, punished the most vulnerable, the most educationally marginalized and the most disadvantaged in our society, and in doing so condemned a large cohort of marginalized young people to both educational and health disadvantage.” Basically, what this means is people who were the most vulnerable were punished for the agreements brought forth. This made citizens angry, which made them more determined not to let the government ignore the gripping connection between education and health.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2009/1020/1224257051027.html