|
The Brazilian population is becoming better educated. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics' (IBGE) Synthesis of Social Indicators, 2004, the average number of years of schooling rose from 5 in 1993 to 6.4 in 2003.
Among young people in the 20-24 age bracket, this index reaches 8.5. Among people 25 or older, however, the average is only 6.3.
For the head of the IBGE's Division of Social Indicators, Ana Lúcia Saboia, the indicators point to great disparities among the diverse layers of society.
"The difference in schooling between the wealthiest 20% of the population and the poorest 20% amounts to 6.5 years," she observes. "The question of income is still very important in education."
Disparities also are evident when the different regions of the country are compared. Whereas the average for members of the population over 10 in the Southeast is 7.1, in the Northeast the schooling index is only 5 years.
Among units of the federation, the differences are even more pronounced. In the Federal District, for example, average schooling is 8.3 years, as against 4.4 years in the Northeastern state of Alagoas.
Alagoas, moreover, is the state with the greatest degree of inequality among different social classes, when the population 25 and older is considered.
While the wealthiest 20% in that state have the highest level of schooling in the country (11.8 years), the poorest 20% are the worst off (2.6 years).
"These data probably indicate that there should be a greater distribution of income in order for the social indicators to improve. I imagine that, with a better distribution, the population will have more opportunity to attend school and obtain a better education," said the coordinator of the study.
Mirian Paura, professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, believes that even if Brazil is able to increase the average schooling of the population, this is no reason for commemoration.
"We saw an increase of 1.4 years over a period of ten years (from 1993 to 2003). Can it be that in 2013 we will achieve only another 1.4?" she wondered.
In her view, one of the ways for Brazil to achieve better results in education is to universalize secondary education, as was the case with fundamental education, which in 2003 covered around 97.2% of the population in the 7-14 age bracket, for which school attendance is mandatory.
"We have nearly 200 thousand regular school establishments. 88.5% of them are for fundamental education and only 11.5% for secondary education. A large part of the municipalities offer no secondary education. These children and young people don't continue their schooling," Paura affirmed.
Translation: David Silberstein
Agência Brasil
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.