Balanced budgets and debt

If balancing your budget means cutting back on health and educational spending, is it worth it?  In poor countries, restraining spending is essentially restraining productivity, as lack of Progress in health and education will permanently hamstring economic development.
No doubt, crippling levels of interest on debt must be dealt with, but the priority for economic development must first of all be productivity and capability. Debt will never be paid off if an economy never becomes capable of paying off debt. As has been pointed out in the book Bad Samaritans,  by austerity logic, we should send kids to the coal mines as soon as they can walk, rather than spend 18 years educating them.