Education in Brazil

Sometimes to better understand a problem, we need to zoom in and look at it under a microscope. Other times we need to zoom out and look at it from outer space. Failing schools are endemic within failing educational systems, of which Brazil was almost the worst in 2000. Yet when the then-current President Cardoso took a hard look at what was wrong, he got his country back on track to widespread improvement.

The recent article in The Economist entitled "No longer bottom of the class" explains Brazil's path from a disastrous educational system to a rapidly improving network of schools.  Step one was entering Brazil into the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which quickly showed just how bad Brazilian education really was. There's a lesson here. The first step in change is often gathering enough hard data make people pay attention.

Yet this was just the beginning.  Several reforms had to take place. First, teachers were retiring after only 25 years for women, and 30 for men, which meant many districts had to spend up to half their budgets on pensions.  Other reforms including testing teachers (not students) on both content and pedagogy before they hit the classroom. Yet, returning to my last post, teacher quality once again was central:

Bad teachers are the biggest handicap. In few parts of the world do high achievers aspire to teaching (exceptions like Finland and South Korea have the best schools). Uruguay is the only Latin American country where would-be teachers have above-average school grades. Factor in that the region’s average is abysmal, and by global standards Latin American teachers are themselves very poorly educated. Brazil compounds the problem by training teachers in neither subject matter nor teaching skills (they learn about the philosophy of education instead).

First things first. Do teachers really know their content? And can they teach?  These are what good schools are made of. But second, what about the social prestige of being a teacher?  Why is it, in America for example, that successful young students become doctors and lawyers, but the best of the best very rarely become teachers? In South Korea and Finland this isn't so, and they have some of the world's best students to show for it.

The article also outlines innovative practices like teaching training, attendance incentives for teachers, and incentives for teachers who actually are experts in what they teach. But I would still highlight the role of the teacher.  For those interested in redeeming education, how can we get the most motivated, highest performing teachers who are committed to a Christian worldview in our schools? Schools start and finish in the classroom, and redeeming education must take place first between pedagogue and pupil.