You don’t need to put the level of your success and escaping poverty all in education, education is important no doubt but not to the extent where you say without education someone can’t make it in life, all that’s very important is for you to be able to learn and know how to read and write that’s all, you can learn skill and perfect what ever you learn as skill which you can use to earn even far more better than those who are highly educated, what matter is you knowing what you are doing.
I agree with you that there are still some people who can achieve wealth without a high level of education but how many have done it? And does that wealth come to them as easily as you say? Have you become rich or have you met how many people became rich without education?
Education cannot guarantee success for anyone but I am sure that successful people are those who have been well educated. Also, I am sure that if we are well educated and have a high level of education, we will have more chances to be successful and rich than those who have low level of education. So I completely disagree with your thinking when you downplay the importance of education and highly educated people.