I live in one of the most backwards parts of Brazil. Here in the interior of Bahia, the economy, the educational system, and the local political culture have very little going for them. For that reason, I'm careful to avoid generalizing too much, so I don't do to Brazil the equivalent of characterizing the whole of the US based on what's going on in Louisiana.
Take, for example, local college students in the region. These days, college is starting to become reasonably accessible to the population. People whose parents never dreamed of going to college, and in many cases are functionally illiterate, now have children that are on their way to graduating. The problem is that the region has what to produce a college culture, at least the way I would ideally expect it to produce. No, I am not talking about beer bongs, but the important (even if it doesn't describe the majority) subset of people that exhibit the following:
-genuine curiosity about learning more about the world, and respect for knowledge and people that have it.
-inspiration when confronted with high expectations, and initiative to tackle tough problems without needing to be directed every step of the way.
-a new way of looking at things, and a resistance to the idea that what one has always known is the way things will always be.
At the time of this writing, I would say that in a class of 20-30 people at a given local college or university, 1-2 students can be said to have at least one of those traits. Setting aside some well-meaning but simply unprepared students that are somewhere in the middle, a large number of students in a given classroom seem to see college as a prison, and seek to adjust their time there accordingly. They fight the guards... or professors and administrators... every step of their four years in hopes of realizing the prisoner's ideal: to be present during the required 3-4 hours per day, but without having to actually read or discuss about anything about the subject they are studying, until the day they receive their parole... or diploma (these are mostly private schools after all, and they can't afford to kick out students that don't deserve to graduate). Students that excel and take an interest in the material are routinely mocked by the other students. At a given moment, a large percentage of students in class are texting or surfing the Internet, making fun of the professor or other students, or simply zoning out. Over half the students show up late, return after 30 minutes from the 15-minute break, and complain incessantly if forced to remain in the classroom until the time that class ends. The students care about two things (remember that learning isn't one of them): getting a passing grade (they will - remember, it's a private school); and being marked "present". The teacher who marks students late is justified, but still has to weather an incredible amount of arguing from students, who, if they put 10% of the effort they put into fighting about whether they were present or not into their school work, might learn quite a lot.
Of course, it's in the professors interest to play tough with the students, but the cost to breaking the underperforming equilibrium are high. A single step deemed as unfair (say, a test that they felt was difficult [it probably wasn't], or being tough with absences and participation grades) can launch serious protests among the students. They will scream in the professor's face, they will leave the room in rage (especially ironic if they are protesting the absence policy), and the 2-3 students that actually participate in the discussions will move to the back of the room and pout, leaving the professor to teach, essentially, to nobody.
Summing up? College here is basically a bad high school in the US. (Though to quickly dampen some of my views on students here, we have to remember how bad the education they are offered is before they make it to college, though this is a discussion for many another days)
Anyway, like I said, it's important not to generalize from a limited experience. But sometimes, however, it seems like I might be trying too hard. Here goes an interesting
blog post from an American student at a
university ranked at #13 in Brazil - incredibly enough, she finds the same problems in what can almost be called an "elite" school in Brazil, with may of the same fantastically low standards found in the interior of Bahia:
I have a confession to make. PUC is harder than Princeton.
Maybe not in terms of workload, or reading difficulty, or even the fact that all my classes are in Portuguese. PUC is hard because it feels like high school. I know that it’s only been two years, but I’d completely forgotten what it was like to be in a classroom and feel that nobody wanted to be there. “You have the right to miss up to 25% of the classes,” one professor explained wearily as students texted in the back of the room. “If you copy from Wikipedia on your midterm, we will find out,” said another. At one point during a Brazilian literature course, the professor was resolutely talking over at least 3 different whispered conversations; in a 4-person history seminar, the benevolent old professor actually had to shush 50% of the class.
PUC is hard to deal with because people don’t seem to care about the classes, or know why they’re there. All right, that’s not true of everyone. The four of us were talking before the history seminar, and one of the students is working 10 hours a night while writing his thesis because he has a one-year-old daughter. A rare few seem genuinely excited about the courses.
But often even I can’t understand why. I’ve witnessed professors come into class and spend the entire time reading out loud. I don’t mean reading prepared notes, I mean repeating the assigned text and occasionally elaborating. My course on Poverty and Social Inequality had a lively discussion the other day, but that’s only because everyone was complaining about the cost of living in Rio. (If there’s one thing Brazilians love, it’s complaining about food prices. Seriously. I swear, I can walk up to any carioca and whine about how much cheese costs at Zona Sul, and we can keep going like that for at least half an hour. Instant friendship.)
“Oh, you should be fine,” one PUC student said when I listed the courses I was planning to take. “Those are all in humanities. So pretty much you just have to show up to a few classes and then do all the readings right before the exam.” I laughed nervously, hoping he was kidding, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
I might have been under incredible stress at Princeton, reading and writing at least 10 times more, but I thrived on my work. And so did most everyone around me. I’d come out of a really provocative seminar discussion walking on air; here, I have to show up to class, sit for 2 hours, and get my name checked off on the roll. (Yes, they call roll.) Sometimes it doesn’t feel like college so much as afterschool detention. So, yes, PUC is hard.
