If universal education was intended to solve these kinds of problems, it seems to me it has obviously failed. I strongly believe that social ills of this sort are FAR better addressed by trying to eliminate poverty than by trying to force kids to attend classes they are getting nothing out of.

That being said, universal education can certainly be seen as an attempt to eliminate poverty. The problem is that the cause of learning is not being advanced, for the majority of students, by forcing kids who don't want to be there to keep coming. All many kids are learning from this experience is to hate learning and to associate it with painful experiences. The ones who don't want to be there resent their teachers, and the ones who want to be there resent their classmates.

It seems likely to me, then, that we are making it more difficult to escape poverty, not less, by forcing school attendance on every student. Though the analogy can only be taken so far, I can't help but think of a lifeboat onto which everyone is fleeing as a ship sinks. Will we try to force everyone onto the lifeboat, in the name of egalitarian principles, even if that means that the lifeboat sinks and no one survives?