When proposing a reflection on Brazilian education, it is worth remembering that it was only in the mid-twentieth century that the process of schooling expansion education in the country began, and that its growth, in terms of public education, took place in the late 1970s and early 1980.
With that said, we can turn to national data:
Brazil ranks 53rd in education among 65 countries assessed (PISA). Even with the social program that encouraged the enrollment of 98% of children between 6 and 12 years old, 731,000 children are still out of school (IBGE). Functional illiteracy of people between 15 and 64 years old was registered at 28% in 2009 (IBOPE); 34% of students who reach the 5th year of schooling are still unable to read (All for Education); 20% of young people who complete elementary school, and who live in large cities, do not master the use of reading and writing (All for Education). Teachers receive less than the minimum salary (et. al., in the media).
Faced with the data, many can become critical and even ask themselves questions about the advances, concluding that “if society changes, the school could only evolve with it!”. Perhaps common sense would suggest that we think that way. However, we can note that the evolution of society, in a way, makes the school adapt to for a modern life, but defensively, late, without guaranteeing the elevation of the level of education.
Therefore, now not because of common sense but because of custom, the “blame” would tend to fall on the teaching professional. In this way, teachers become targets or are caught in the crossfire of many social and political hopes in crisis today. External criticisms of the educational system demand more and more work from teachers, as if education alone had to solve all social problems.
We already know that it is not enough, as was thought in the 1950s and 1960s, to provide teachers with books and new teaching materials. The fact is that the quality of education is strongly linked to the quality of teacher education. Another fact is that what the teacher thinks about teaching determines what the teacher does when he teaches.
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Teacher development is a precondition for school development and, in general, experience shows that teachers are poor implementers of others' ideas. No reform, innovation or transformation – whatever you want to call it – lasts without the teacher.
It is necessary to abandon the belief that teachers' attitudes only change to the extent that teachers perceive positive results in student learning. For an effective change of belief and attitude, it would be appropriate to consider teachers as subjects. Subjects who, in professional activity, are led to get involved in formal learning situations.
Deep changes will only happen when teacher training is no longer an updating process, made from above. down, and become a true learning process, as an individual and collective gain, and not as a aggression.
Certainly, teachers cannot be taken as the only actors in this scenario. We can agree that this situation is also the result of little engagement and pressure on the part of the population as a whole, which contributes to the slowdown. Even without mentioning the corporatism of the bodies responsible for management - not only the education system, but also the school units - and also the many of our contemporaries who think, not daring to say aloud, “that if all were instructed, who would sweep the streets?"; or that they have no problem “dispensing everyone with high-level training when the available jobs do not demand it”.
In the meantime, we remain far from reaching the goal of literating all children up to 8 years of age and carrying the burden of poor IDEB performance. With an average pass rate of 0 to 10, Brazilian students scored 4.6 in 2009. The country's goal is to reach 6 in 2022.
Eliane da Costa Bruini
Brazil School Collaborator
Graduated in Pedagogy
By the Salesian University Center of São Paulo - UNISAL
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
BRUINI, Eliane da Costa. "Education in Brazil"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/educacao/educacao-no-brasil.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
