The reason people have trouble learning is because they are victims of mass culture. When a child is raised on corporate propaganda from age 1 how do you expect him or her to be intellectual?
You phrase these things in moral terms and indicate that the failure lies with those in poverty. But we intellectuals discovered long ago that those in poverty behave in predictable, controllable ways.
Garbage in, garbage out. The public schools have become corporate propaganda systems and the Universities have lost all sense of public duty.
The poor can't educate themselves. They need an enlightened class to protect them (using government) from the powerful forces of propaganda.
You sit in your ivory tower and blame the victims, when you have no idea what it's like to be raised by a television and modern public schools bought and paid for by special interests.
Children are impressionable and stupid. Your classes have to compete for attention with the greatest propaganda machine the world has ever known: the U.S. corporate media.