Brazil: Poor Education System Major Economic Problem

Sept. 27, 2010 - PRLog -- By David Caploe PhD, Chief Political Economist, EconomyWatch.com.

The LACK of education is quickly becoming an economic problem for Brazil,

both now, and more disturbingly in the future.

This is especially upsetting because the Brazilian elite is extraordinarily WELL educated, not just in a “local” but global context.

The previous President, Fernando Henrique Cardoso –

whose record as such was deeply mixed, to say the least –

was nevertheless, before he become President and “sold out”,

a well-respected activist scholar,

who wrote a book that became a classic in several branches of the social sciences,

Dependency & Development in Latin America.

Even more impressive is long-time Harvard Law School faculty, Brazilian Roberto Mangabeira Unger,

a powerful interdisciplinary intellectual who was one of the leading theoreticians of Critical Legal Studies,

one of the few academic “movements” that actually had a real-world effect

via its power as a key framework for professors at leading law schools for decades.

Like Cardoso, Unger is an active participant in his country’s political life,

not, interestingly enough, under his fellow academic Cardoso,

but under his current, and much more radical, successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, usually known as Lula,

who, when sworn in as Brazil’s president in early 2003, emotionally declared that

he had finally earned his “first diploma” by becoming president of the country.

One of Brazil’s least educated presidents — Mr. da Silva completed only the fourth grade —

soon became one of its most beloved, lifting millions out of extreme poverty,

stabilizing Brazil’s economy and earning near-legendary status both at home and abroad.

But while Mr. da Silva has overcome his humble beginnings, his country is still grappling with its own.

Perhaps more than any other challenge facing Brazil today,

education is a stumbling block in its bid to accelerate its economy

and establish itself as one of the world’s most powerful nations,

exposing a major weakness in its newfound armor.

“Unfortunately, in an era of global competition, the current state of education in Brazil

means it is likely to fall behind other developing economies

in the search for new investment and economic growth opportunities,”

the World Bank concluded in a 2008 report.

Over the past decade, Brazil’s students have scored among the lowest

of any country’s students taking international exams for basic skills

like reading, mathematics and science,

trailing fellow Latin American nations like Chile, Uruguay and Mexico.

Brazilian 15-year-olds tied for 49th out of 56 countries

on the reading exam of the Program for International Student Assessment,

with more than half scoring in the test’s bottom reading level in 2006,

the most recent year available.

In math and science, they fared even worse.

“We should be ashamed of ourselves,”

said Ilona Becskeházy, executive director of the Lemann Foundation,

an organization based in São Paulo devoted to improving Brazilian education.

“This means that 15-year-olds in Brazil are mastering more or less the same skills

as 9-year-olds or 10-year-olds in countries such as Denmark or Finland.”

The task confronting the nation — and Mr. da Silva’s legacy — is daunting.

Here in the dirt-poor northeastern town of Caetés,

where Mr. da Silva lived his first seven years,

about 30 percent of the population is still illiterate,

a figure three times higher than the national rate.

When Mr. da Silva was a boy here, his father used to beat some of his older siblings

when they went to school instead of working,

said Denise Paraná, the author of a biography of the president.

Today, teachers say that many parents send their children to school

only because school attendance is a requirement of the Bolsa Familia subsidy program

that Mr. da Silva has greatly expanded under his watch,

which provides up to about $115 a month per family.

But even with the added incentive, reading levels vary so greatly here that

in one eighth-grade classroom, students from 13 to 17 all read aloud from the same text.

“A lot of parents say, ‘Why should they study if there are no opportunities?’ ”

said Ana Carla Pereira, a teacher at another rural school here.

Now in his last year in office and talking about his place in history,

Mr. da Silva has an “obsession” with the issue,

his education minister, Fernando Haddad, said,

which was plain to see when he recently returned here to his childhood town.

“I want every child to study much more than I could, much more,”

he said while announcing a program to give laptops to students.

“And for all of them to get a university diploma, for all of them to have a vocational diploma.”

The urgency could hardly be clearer.

Brazil has already established itself as a global force,

riding a commodity and domestic consumption boom

to become one of the largest economies in the world.

With huge new oil discoveries and an increasingly important role

in providing food and raw materials to China,

the country is poised to surge even more.

But the nation’s educational shortcomings are leaving many Brazilians on the sidelines.

More than 22 percent of the roughly 25 million workers available to join Brazil’s work force this year

were not considered qualified to meet the demands of the labor market,

according to a government report in March.

“In certain cities and states we have a problem hiring workers, even though we do have employment,”

said Márcio Pochmann, president of the Institute for Applied Economic Research,

the government agency that produced the March report.

Earlier estimates showed that tens of thousands of jobs went unclaimed

because there were not enough qualified professionals to fill them.

Unless that gap is filled soon, Brazil may miss its “demographic window” over the next two decades

in which “the economically active population is at its peak,” the World Bank says ...

To read more at http://www.economywatch.com’, go to:

http://www.economywatch.com/economy-business-and-finance-...

# # #

EconomyWatch.com is the world's largest global, independent, economics community. Every month we serve over 750k users, who read and discuss economics, investing and finance topics.