Gestão de Pessoas class #2

In my second week of administration classes, content related to education and development. A few topics that were presented:

In a discussion about measuring results correctly, we discussed the omnipresent government advertising that solely focuses on the amount invested in each project. This is an interesting topic that probably deserves its own future post. In any case, not only is there an incredible tendency to focus on investment rather than result, the figures are often ingenuous. The example presented in class was that investments in school snacks (yes, school snacks are a big issue in Brazil) rose by a huge percentage during the Lula administration, and this is presented as a government accomplishment. However, the money that goes towards school snacks is predetermined by law as a percentage of certain tax revenue, which is to say that the total investment has nothing to do with the administration. And this leaves aside the fact that it is clearly positive that the government is spending billions more on school snacks each year... if the US government advertised that school snack spending in 2011 was three times what it was in 2003 there would probably be riots. In any case, the example helps to show how Brazil's progress can easily be overblown and people are easily taken in by slick advertising.

Here goes a youtube video in which the Federal Government brags about the enormous increase in snack spending (a 131% increase per student) in a spot shot in a place that is utterly unlike any Brazilian school I've ever seen:



The class included a very long discussion of teaching credentials and motivation. The fact is that the municipal system (at least in this region) is designed with almost no incentives for the teacher. You pay is the result entirely of your education credentials, not your capability in the classroom. Beyond that, the pay scale makes no sense. If you have a quality four-year college degree, your pay raises 30%. If you add a "pos-graduação" (a one year specialist course) on top of that, your pay increases an incredibly 70%. And again, there is no relationship whatsoever between the advanced degree and performance in the classroom. The result? Teachers are incentivized to look for the easiest way to get any college degree and have no incentive (outside of the kindness of their hearts) to improve their teaching technique. Ideally, they will find a private school that offers a pos-graduação that requires a meeting every few months and that needs your money so bad that they can't fail. They get pushed through without learning anything, and the taxpayer is then on the hook for a very high salary for the region, upwards of R$4k per month (more than double what I could ever hope to earn, as a foreigner here that cannot get government work). Many of the worst teachers in the region still have incredibly salaries and will never be fired (and their students will never learn much from them) due to the fact that performance simply isn't measured.