On Sunday, I took my first class in a pós-graduação (1- or 2-year "specialist" degree program) on management, which includes a good amount of content related to education, since the coordinator/professor was previously a teacher and the secretary of education of the small city of Capim Grosso, four hours north of Salvador. After each class, I plan to share whatever interesting tidbits related to education and development that come up.
From the inaugural class, the most jarring fact was that students in many of Capim Grosso's lower-quality municipal schools typically spend only 2.5 hours actually in class. Now, almost every school in Brazil has relatively little class time, since students go only in the morning or the afternoon (or at night, if you are one of the many working adults that still hasn't finished). But hypothetically, class goes from something like 7:30-12, with a short recess. The reality? Teachers show up after eight o'clock and often don't truly start class until around 8:30. The supposedly 15-minute recess goes on for at least 30 minutes (schools don't use strict bell systems like in the US, so students seem to go back to class more or less when they feel like it). And by the time 11:30 rolls around, there isn't a single teacher still in the classroom. And you can bet that a good portion of those 2.5 hours actually in the classroom are wasted too, depending on the quality of the individual teacher.
Something which I had already known, but was also highlighted in the class: in Brazil, the school principals are political appointees. When a new mayor is elected, or an old mayor is removed due to corruption and a new one enters, the new politician is obligated to hand out jobs to all his supporters that got him there. As a result, the secretary of education is purged and the schools all undergo immediate change in directorship. Practically, this means both that the directors do not necessarily have any compelling technical reason to have the job (such as a skill of any type), and that tumultuous changes in schools that hurt teaching and reduce class time are frequent. Not only is the change frequent, but most politicians consider it obligatory to scupper everything the previous administration did, such as long-term educational planning. The result? Any real planning process is a waste of time. It takes a very long time, perhaps years, to formulate a competent plan for a municipal educational system with full feedback from teachers and the community. By the time you can start putting the plan into practice, the government will probably have changed. In the 12-year school career of one student, there is a good chance that three or more attempts to put a plan into place will come up, but none will achieve a lasting impact.
quarta-feira, 21 de setembro de 2011
Brazilian Education in General
I've been writing a bit about education lately for a few reasons:
- It is crucial to Brazil's development. As implied in a few posts a while back, such as the one about Professor Rajan's comments and the Financial Times article about the possible end a Lulismo, at some point the easy gains are going to stop. Where does Brazil look for growth after that? Education is one important response. The Brazilian author of the book A Cabeça do Brasileiro also considers superior education to be Brazil's salvation, all of which merits closer study of what is really going on.
- If and when Brazil really becomes a major energy player, the idea is to use some of the wealth to improve healthcare and education in the country, meaning that things are going to keep getting more interesting.
- Education is bad in Brazil in general and extremely bad (compared to the world overall) where I live, in the interior of Bahia.
I plan to continue writing a great deal about Brazilian education going forward, but before diving in too much, I thought I'd take a step back to see where Brazil is in world education.
Here is an article about Brazilian education from the Economist, from back in December. In it, the author notes that the respected PISA examination tested 65 countries in math, reading and science, and Brazil come in 53rd place. And this is regarded as a serious improvement in a country where only a decade ago, most students didn't finish elementary school and most adults were functionally illiterate. So although the situation is pretty grave, at least it's getting better.
Since the article is concise and the numbers are shocking, I'm just going to post the text directly so readers (if you exist!) can see for themselves more or less the state of Brazilian education:
But the recent progress merely upgrades Brazil’s schools from disastrous to very bad. Two-thirds of 15-year-olds are capable of no more than basic arithmetic. Half cannot draw inferences from what they read, or give any scientific explanation for familiar phenomena. In each of reading, mathematics and science only about one child in 100 ranks as a high-performer; in the OECD 9% do. Even private, fee-paying schools are mediocre. Their pupils come from the best-off homes, but they turn out 15-year-olds who do no better than the average child across the OECD.
One reason the poor learn so little is that a big chunk of school spending is wasted. Since teachers retire on full pay after 25 years for women and 30 for men, up to half of schools’ budgets go on pensions. Except in places such as São Paulo state, which has started to take on the unions, teachers can be absent for 40 of the year’s 200 school-days without having their pay docked. More than a tenth of spending goes on pupils who are repeating grades: an astonishing 15% of those graduating from secondary school are over 25.
More recently, UNESCO ranked Brazil at 88th place in the world in education, behind powerhouses such as Bolivia. The low ranking was covered widely in the press.
In the next weeks (and months and years) I'll be considering further why Brazil ranks so low.
- It is crucial to Brazil's development. As implied in a few posts a while back, such as the one about Professor Rajan's comments and the Financial Times article about the possible end a Lulismo, at some point the easy gains are going to stop. Where does Brazil look for growth after that? Education is one important response. The Brazilian author of the book A Cabeça do Brasileiro also considers superior education to be Brazil's salvation, all of which merits closer study of what is really going on.
- If and when Brazil really becomes a major energy player, the idea is to use some of the wealth to improve healthcare and education in the country, meaning that things are going to keep getting more interesting.
- Education is bad in Brazil in general and extremely bad (compared to the world overall) where I live, in the interior of Bahia.
I plan to continue writing a great deal about Brazilian education going forward, but before diving in too much, I thought I'd take a step back to see where Brazil is in world education.
Here is an article about Brazilian education from the Economist, from back in December. In it, the author notes that the respected PISA examination tested 65 countries in math, reading and science, and Brazil come in 53rd place. And this is regarded as a serious improvement in a country where only a decade ago, most students didn't finish elementary school and most adults were functionally illiterate. So although the situation is pretty grave, at least it's getting better.
Since the article is concise and the numbers are shocking, I'm just going to post the text directly so readers (if you exist!) can see for themselves more or less the state of Brazilian education:
But the recent progress merely upgrades Brazil’s schools from disastrous to very bad. Two-thirds of 15-year-olds are capable of no more than basic arithmetic. Half cannot draw inferences from what they read, or give any scientific explanation for familiar phenomena. In each of reading, mathematics and science only about one child in 100 ranks as a high-performer; in the OECD 9% do. Even private, fee-paying schools are mediocre. Their pupils come from the best-off homes, but they turn out 15-year-olds who do no better than the average child across the OECD.
One reason the poor learn so little is that a big chunk of school spending is wasted. Since teachers retire on full pay after 25 years for women and 30 for men, up to half of schools’ budgets go on pensions. Except in places such as São Paulo state, which has started to take on the unions, teachers can be absent for 40 of the year’s 200 school-days without having their pay docked. More than a tenth of spending goes on pupils who are repeating grades: an astonishing 15% of those graduating from secondary school are over 25.
More recently, UNESCO ranked Brazil at 88th place in the world in education, behind powerhouses such as Bolivia. The low ranking was covered widely in the press.
In the next weeks (and months and years) I'll be considering further why Brazil ranks so low.
segunda-feira, 19 de setembro de 2011
Birth Rates
National Geographic has a nice short article about the fall of birth rates in Brazil. I happen to live in one of the more underdeveloped regions of the country (the interior of Bahia), and while it's also clear here that younger generations have far fewer children than older generations, the extent of the drop on the national level still surprised me. My wife, who has over a decade of experience as a teacher, points to income level as an obvious part of the process: "Go to a private school, and almost all the children are only children. Go to a public school, and none are."
The article pins much of its argument on the power of Brazilian woman, including the phrase "no American today is in a position to call Brazil retrograde on matters of gender equity". Perhaps true of Brazil as a whole, but I'm sure plenty of progressive Americans would have no qualms about calling specific places in Brazil exactly that - I have personally met men here who think it's wrong for women to drive cars, who become uncontrollably emotive when they think about the progress gained for women at the expense of men over recent decades, and who describe themselves as "machista" because they don't understand that not being "machista" is not the same thing as lacking masculinity (or as being gay, as would be the immediate logical conclusion for most...). That may all be pretty anecdotal (and in any case, there are surely plenty of Americans that share similar attitudes), but here's something that I'm certain is sadly widespread here: women who cannot finish high school, go to college, or undertake some other positive activity (say, joining a theater group) because their boyfriends or husbands don't understand it and therefore won't allow it.
But rather than expounding any further on regional or class differences, my real contribution here will be to try to scientifically summarize local women's wisdom on child rearing by loosely translating two comments overheard by my wife on local buses in Senhor do Bonfim:
First:
"The way I like luxury, do you think I'm going to have a kid and have to share everything with him?"
Second (separate incident, not a conversation with the first):
"Having a child is wonderful and brings a house into harmony. I don't understand these people that get married but don't have children. You're going to get married just to stare at your husband's face for ten years?"
(Later on, the same woman is still sharing her philosophy on the family)
"And also, who has the arm strength to carry a child all day long? At 6 o'clock I just put him in front of the TV."
(Colleague asks if isn't bad for the child's development)
"No way! And you have to start doing it early. That way, as they get older they can entertain themselves and don't give you so much work."
The article pins much of its argument on the power of Brazilian woman, including the phrase "no American today is in a position to call Brazil retrograde on matters of gender equity". Perhaps true of Brazil as a whole, but I'm sure plenty of progressive Americans would have no qualms about calling specific places in Brazil exactly that - I have personally met men here who think it's wrong for women to drive cars, who become uncontrollably emotive when they think about the progress gained for women at the expense of men over recent decades, and who describe themselves as "machista" because they don't understand that not being "machista" is not the same thing as lacking masculinity (or as being gay, as would be the immediate logical conclusion for most...). That may all be pretty anecdotal (and in any case, there are surely plenty of Americans that share similar attitudes), but here's something that I'm certain is sadly widespread here: women who cannot finish high school, go to college, or undertake some other positive activity (say, joining a theater group) because their boyfriends or husbands don't understand it and therefore won't allow it.
But rather than expounding any further on regional or class differences, my real contribution here will be to try to scientifically summarize local women's wisdom on child rearing by loosely translating two comments overheard by my wife on local buses in Senhor do Bonfim:
First:
"The way I like luxury, do you think I'm going to have a kid and have to share everything with him?"
Second (separate incident, not a conversation with the first):
"Having a child is wonderful and brings a house into harmony. I don't understand these people that get married but don't have children. You're going to get married just to stare at your husband's face for ten years?"
(Later on, the same woman is still sharing her philosophy on the family)
"And also, who has the arm strength to carry a child all day long? At 6 o'clock I just put him in front of the TV."
(Colleague asks if isn't bad for the child's development)
"No way! And you have to start doing it early. That way, as they get older they can entertain themselves and don't give you so much work."
quinta-feira, 15 de setembro de 2011
Land of No Consequences
The current government federal government, under Dilma, has been on an incredible hot streak for losing its ministers due to corruption. As of yesterday, five ministers have stepped down from their posts since Dilma took power. It's arguably impressive that so many ministers are being forced out of their positions. But possibly even more impressive is the lack of any real consequences that they have to pay in the face of massive corruption, fraud, and theft. Take the case of the minister of tourism that was just discarded, Pedro Novais, as summarized in Folha de São Paulo:
Novais, from Maranhão, eighty years old, has had six terms in Congress. He is not notable for any project, any political articulation, or any great gesture. But he became minister for no reason and now he's becoming more famous everyday.
It's also worth noting that he looks like this:
The reference to the state of Maranhão links him to the notoriously corrupt President of the Senate, Sarney, which explains how he got as far as he got despite not having any accomplishments. Despite having an incredibly salary of R$ 26,700 per month (of which everything is pocket change because Brazilian congressmen don't pay for their own food, transport, housing, or staff), he still got into trouble but repeatedly putting his personal purchases (maid services for some of his homes, a driver for his wife, a motel party) onto the public payroll. And this is after eight subordinates were all forced to leave the ministry due to massive spending fraud (somehow, this didn't effect the minister personally). What will happen to him now that he has finally been forced to leave his post?
Not much. He'll go back to being a congressman, and will continue earning an exorbitant salary. He'll have no responsibilities except to continue to help enrich his political party. He'll probably take some time to think of very elaborate explanations for all the money he stole. He'll make repeated affirmations about the way he was mistreated by the press (if he is anything like his predecessors in leaving the ministry, he may even make grand pronouncements about how he and his party "are not trash to be swept"). He certainly won't go to trial or have to pay in any real way for using his position to enrich himself and his friends.
Some people might say that this light handling of criminals is exclusive only to the upper class. There is some truth to this; a crack dealer would not be forced to step down and merely sell marijuana if he were caught. But there does seem to be a streak of a complete lack of consequences throughout all levels of public administration, including schools.
I hear about a lot of examples through my wife, who is a local city employee as a teacher and educational program coordinator. The city has recently installed a finger-print scanner to register the coming and going of city employees. This, of course, is an incredibly stupid idea. Previous to the scanner, the government couldn't prove whether or not employees were showing up. Now all they need to do is show up at 8am, scan their fingers, and suddenly they're free until it's time to scan out at 5pm, and as far as the government is concerned, it is "proven" that they've been at work, regardless of the reality. According to my wife, some employees are taking advantage of this system in full - they are scanned in as working 40 hours a week, but they only show up a couple of afternoons a week to move some things around and give the impression that they've been working. The result? The projects don't work.
A friend of hers works as a secretary for for a school. Her coworker began to study education in a university, apparently exclusively as a way to reduce his hours (public employees can work part-time and be paid full-time if they are in school). Now, he cuts out of work at noon, leaves everything for his coworkers to do, and probably sits at home and watches TV.
The system benefits incompetent people as well as lazy people. Once you are in, it doesn't matter if you have no clue what you are doing. No one is ever going to force you out of your position as a government employee, as long as there is no PF (FBI) investigation against you. It doesn't matter how inefficient you are personally making government.
There are probably hundreds of examples like these, and they all add up to local governments that simply don't work. Like Pedro Novais at the federal level, every year millions of idiots are put into positions of responsibility because someone has to please a voting bloc. The result is that competent people are left out, people that have no interest at all in the work they are doing end up in important positions (that they either don't bother showing up for or just use to steal money, which is basically the same thing), and half the social projects that the government boasts about end up going nowhere.
In the case of education, this certainly affects the quality of teaching. I understand from friends that teachers in state schools have vast amounts of bureaucracy to deal with if they are sick for a day. But this isn't the case of municipal teachers. And even leaving truancy aside, the quality of teaching inside the classroom of local schools is pretty much unregulated. In bad municipal schools (and there are many), any excuse not to give class will be taken (let's decorate the room today!). You can be an English teacher and not speak a word of English for decades in some schools, and you will be handsomely rewarded for your service.
Finally, this has a remarkable effect on students. As far as I can tell, students are generally not punished for bad behavior. I teach at the college level, and the results of all this are... interesting. In effect, the relationship between teacher and student gets turned on its head. A student that conducts (incredibly loud) conversation throughout class is not rude; but a teacher that asks him or her to be quiet is. A student that doesn't bother to turn in a homework assignment is pretty sure he or she can work out a deal with the teacher (and even students that haven't shown up to class until halfway through the semester will expect their teachers to figure out how to accommodate them). Plagiarism and cheating are widespread because students are not used to paying any consequences. Essentially, students do not expect their grades to reflect what they've learned and how their performance has been on school projects, but rather how well they get along with their teacher. Thus, the teacher can expect a lot of schmoozing before and after class, but not much his students during class. And they'll get pushed through to their diploma, one way or the other.
In the end, merit is pretty irrelevant in many aspects of Brazilian life, especially government service and public education. The individual response to this is only rational, after all - why bother working hard when you'll get a lot more benefits simply by having powerful friends, whether a politician or your teacher?
Novais, from Maranhão, eighty years old, has had six terms in Congress. He is not notable for any project, any political articulation, or any great gesture. But he became minister for no reason and now he's becoming more famous everyday.
It's also worth noting that he looks like this:
The reference to the state of Maranhão links him to the notoriously corrupt President of the Senate, Sarney, which explains how he got as far as he got despite not having any accomplishments. Despite having an incredibly salary of R$ 26,700 per month (of which everything is pocket change because Brazilian congressmen don't pay for their own food, transport, housing, or staff), he still got into trouble but repeatedly putting his personal purchases (maid services for some of his homes, a driver for his wife, a motel party) onto the public payroll. And this is after eight subordinates were all forced to leave the ministry due to massive spending fraud (somehow, this didn't effect the minister personally). What will happen to him now that he has finally been forced to leave his post?
Not much. He'll go back to being a congressman, and will continue earning an exorbitant salary. He'll have no responsibilities except to continue to help enrich his political party. He'll probably take some time to think of very elaborate explanations for all the money he stole. He'll make repeated affirmations about the way he was mistreated by the press (if he is anything like his predecessors in leaving the ministry, he may even make grand pronouncements about how he and his party "are not trash to be swept"). He certainly won't go to trial or have to pay in any real way for using his position to enrich himself and his friends.
Some people might say that this light handling of criminals is exclusive only to the upper class. There is some truth to this; a crack dealer would not be forced to step down and merely sell marijuana if he were caught. But there does seem to be a streak of a complete lack of consequences throughout all levels of public administration, including schools.
I hear about a lot of examples through my wife, who is a local city employee as a teacher and educational program coordinator. The city has recently installed a finger-print scanner to register the coming and going of city employees. This, of course, is an incredibly stupid idea. Previous to the scanner, the government couldn't prove whether or not employees were showing up. Now all they need to do is show up at 8am, scan their fingers, and suddenly they're free until it's time to scan out at 5pm, and as far as the government is concerned, it is "proven" that they've been at work, regardless of the reality. According to my wife, some employees are taking advantage of this system in full - they are scanned in as working 40 hours a week, but they only show up a couple of afternoons a week to move some things around and give the impression that they've been working. The result? The projects don't work.
A friend of hers works as a secretary for for a school. Her coworker began to study education in a university, apparently exclusively as a way to reduce his hours (public employees can work part-time and be paid full-time if they are in school). Now, he cuts out of work at noon, leaves everything for his coworkers to do, and probably sits at home and watches TV.
The system benefits incompetent people as well as lazy people. Once you are in, it doesn't matter if you have no clue what you are doing. No one is ever going to force you out of your position as a government employee, as long as there is no PF (FBI) investigation against you. It doesn't matter how inefficient you are personally making government.
There are probably hundreds of examples like these, and they all add up to local governments that simply don't work. Like Pedro Novais at the federal level, every year millions of idiots are put into positions of responsibility because someone has to please a voting bloc. The result is that competent people are left out, people that have no interest at all in the work they are doing end up in important positions (that they either don't bother showing up for or just use to steal money, which is basically the same thing), and half the social projects that the government boasts about end up going nowhere.
In the case of education, this certainly affects the quality of teaching. I understand from friends that teachers in state schools have vast amounts of bureaucracy to deal with if they are sick for a day. But this isn't the case of municipal teachers. And even leaving truancy aside, the quality of teaching inside the classroom of local schools is pretty much unregulated. In bad municipal schools (and there are many), any excuse not to give class will be taken (let's decorate the room today!). You can be an English teacher and not speak a word of English for decades in some schools, and you will be handsomely rewarded for your service.
Finally, this has a remarkable effect on students. As far as I can tell, students are generally not punished for bad behavior. I teach at the college level, and the results of all this are... interesting. In effect, the relationship between teacher and student gets turned on its head. A student that conducts (incredibly loud) conversation throughout class is not rude; but a teacher that asks him or her to be quiet is. A student that doesn't bother to turn in a homework assignment is pretty sure he or she can work out a deal with the teacher (and even students that haven't shown up to class until halfway through the semester will expect their teachers to figure out how to accommodate them). Plagiarism and cheating are widespread because students are not used to paying any consequences. Essentially, students do not expect their grades to reflect what they've learned and how their performance has been on school projects, but rather how well they get along with their teacher. Thus, the teacher can expect a lot of schmoozing before and after class, but not much his students during class. And they'll get pushed through to their diploma, one way or the other.
In the end, merit is pretty irrelevant in many aspects of Brazilian life, especially government service and public education. The individual response to this is only rational, after all - why bother working hard when you'll get a lot more benefits simply by having powerful friends, whether a politician or your teacher?
segunda-feira, 12 de setembro de 2011
More naïveté about Brazilian education
In my last post, I argued that the author of A Cabeça do Brasileiro appears to be incredibly naive about the task of providing a college education for all of Brazils students - just offer it, and Brazil will become a first world country.
Right now, I'm starting to sense that this naïveté is fairly widespread. One hint came from today's articles about the ENEM exam (see here, for example), which was originally a test to measure what high-school graduates actually know, but has evolved to become more or less like the US's SAT exams (slowly supplanting a system in which students had to take individual entrance exams for each University they wished to apply to). The article is generally about the fact that public schools send proportionally far more students to take the exam than do public schools, a fact that should surprise nobody. Interestingly, the interviewee in the article gives all the credit to the quality of private school teachers while giving no thought to selection bias (that is, the fact that the smartest, wealthiest people in Brazil will make darn sure that their kids will never set foot in a public school. Or to put it another way, why pay for years and years of a private school education if you aren't even going to make your kid apply to college? If you don't care whether your kid goes to college or not, you probably put him in a free public school).
Here is the part that most interested me though:
There's still another matter that demonstrates the gravity of the situation. Public school students that take the exam in the year they graduate from high school are exempt from the R$ 35 sign-up fee for the federal exam. As the result demonstrate, however, many of the students favored by this policy still missed the test.
"This makes us rethink the idea that just freeing these students from the payment is enough. We need other mechanisms for incentivizing this group of young Brazilians," says Isabel Cappelletti, professor with the School of Education of the São Paulo Catholic University and a specialist in educational evaluations. "The new ENEM, as this new test model became known, was meant to encourage greater democratization of access to higher education, but this still isn't happening."
What? Students that have spent 9 years in educational crapholes (and many of which remain functionally illiterate on the day of their graduation) aren't rushing to college after the government did away with a R$ 35 fee?
The fact that this is news to educational specialists is a bit disturbing. There is a bug in Brazilian policy making, it seems, that convinces people that the problem in its entirety is "access". If you build it or make it free, they will come. This attitude can be seen not only in education, but in culture too. A large part of the Ministry of Culture's strategy for fomenting the arts (and along with it, the economy) is to increase access to things like cinema by shipping cinema equipment to every city. Once the people have access, so the logic goes, they'll fall in love with it and start paying for it in the future. It might have some effect, but I'm pretty certain that somewhere, some official will very soon will say to the press or to himself "This makes us rethink the idea that just giving people free Brazilian movies and equipment is enough to make them prefer Glauber Rocha movies rather than Friday the 13th part IV."
And why do you think Brazilians read a reported 1.4 books per year on average? You guessed it! The problem is access, in several sources I've come across over the months (and which I'll investigate and cite further later). But this is nothing more than incredible wishful thinking. If the problem is access, why have I never seen anyone in the library here in Senhor do Bonfim? If everyone wants books but just can't find them, isn't there a killing to be made by opening a book store around here? Of course not. The problem is not (or at least, not in its entirety) access. I can't tell you in a sentence what the problem is, but anyone who thinks that they can solve a serious educational problem here with one magic bullet is dreaming.
Right now, I'm starting to sense that this naïveté is fairly widespread. One hint came from today's articles about the ENEM exam (see here, for example), which was originally a test to measure what high-school graduates actually know, but has evolved to become more or less like the US's SAT exams (slowly supplanting a system in which students had to take individual entrance exams for each University they wished to apply to). The article is generally about the fact that public schools send proportionally far more students to take the exam than do public schools, a fact that should surprise nobody. Interestingly, the interviewee in the article gives all the credit to the quality of private school teachers while giving no thought to selection bias (that is, the fact that the smartest, wealthiest people in Brazil will make darn sure that their kids will never set foot in a public school. Or to put it another way, why pay for years and years of a private school education if you aren't even going to make your kid apply to college? If you don't care whether your kid goes to college or not, you probably put him in a free public school).
Here is the part that most interested me though:
There's still another matter that demonstrates the gravity of the situation. Public school students that take the exam in the year they graduate from high school are exempt from the R$ 35 sign-up fee for the federal exam. As the result demonstrate, however, many of the students favored by this policy still missed the test.
"This makes us rethink the idea that just freeing these students from the payment is enough. We need other mechanisms for incentivizing this group of young Brazilians," says Isabel Cappelletti, professor with the School of Education of the São Paulo Catholic University and a specialist in educational evaluations. "The new ENEM, as this new test model became known, was meant to encourage greater democratization of access to higher education, but this still isn't happening."
What? Students that have spent 9 years in educational crapholes (and many of which remain functionally illiterate on the day of their graduation) aren't rushing to college after the government did away with a R$ 35 fee?
The fact that this is news to educational specialists is a bit disturbing. There is a bug in Brazilian policy making, it seems, that convinces people that the problem in its entirety is "access". If you build it or make it free, they will come. This attitude can be seen not only in education, but in culture too. A large part of the Ministry of Culture's strategy for fomenting the arts (and along with it, the economy) is to increase access to things like cinema by shipping cinema equipment to every city. Once the people have access, so the logic goes, they'll fall in love with it and start paying for it in the future. It might have some effect, but I'm pretty certain that somewhere, some official will very soon will say to the press or to himself "This makes us rethink the idea that just giving people free Brazilian movies and equipment is enough to make them prefer Glauber Rocha movies rather than Friday the 13th part IV."
And why do you think Brazilians read a reported 1.4 books per year on average? You guessed it! The problem is access, in several sources I've come across over the months (and which I'll investigate and cite further later). But this is nothing more than incredible wishful thinking. If the problem is access, why have I never seen anyone in the library here in Senhor do Bonfim? If everyone wants books but just can't find them, isn't there a killing to be made by opening a book store around here? Of course not. The problem is not (or at least, not in its entirety) access. I can't tell you in a sentence what the problem is, but anyone who thinks that they can solve a serious educational problem here with one magic bullet is dreaming.
segunda-feira, 5 de setembro de 2011
Book Review: A Cabeça do Brasileiro by Alberto Carlos Almeida
I found the book A Cabeça do Brasileiro in my friend's room a few weeks ago. Given that non-self help books are almost impossible to find in the region, and promising books that purport to teach you something about Brazil are hard to find anywhere, I took the opportunity to pilfer it immediately.
The thesis of the book is excellent for anyone wanting to get a clearer picture of what sorts of attitudes, behaviors and beliefs Brazilians as a whole can be said to hold. The book takes as its point of departure the work of the famous Brazilian sociologist Roberto da Matta, whose books provided most of the basic generalizations about Brazilian culture that are still used by anyone writing about the country today. Most famously, he characterized Brazilians, relative to Americans, as hierarchical, paternalistic, and familiar, three characteristics that stand in the way of a fully functioning democracy in the country. His ideas entered the mainstream and perhaps have become clichés - Brazilians can borrow the ideas to explain away pretty much anything with a quick recitation of "well you know, we're a paternalistic society". Author Alberto Carlos Almeida's task in A Cabeça do Brasileiro is to conduct a massive survey (called the Brazilian Social Survey) to figure out exactly to what degree da Matta's ideas can really be found in Brazilian responses to questionnaires.
One colorful example of de Matta's work is the difference between the phrases "do you know who you're talking to?" and "who do you think you are?" The legend goes that in a situation that pits people against each other in a conflict involving special treatment for one but not the other (let's say that someone thinks he's important enough to cut to the front of the line at the post office, rather than waiting behind the other customers), Americans and Brazilians resolve the situation in different ways. In the US, the person and the counter or other customers are likely to cut him down to size with "who do you think you are?" implying that everyone should receive the same, impersonal treatment, and sending him to the back of the line. In Brazil, however, the jerk is far more likely to get his way with "do you know who you're talking to?" and by exploiting some credential (say, a connection to a politician or a police officer) that spells out the trouble that awaits anyone who tries to interfere with him. It might not be that way in 100% of cases, but is this general description of the two countries true enough to be true?
Probably yes. To test if Brazilians are hierarchical, the survey asks respondents questions such as whether a maid should sit on the couch next to the lady of the house upon invitation to do so, or whether she should still watch TV on another chair or in another room in spite of the invitation. Another example is whether the maid should continue to refer to the lady as "madame" even if asked to simply say "you". The test is to determine whether the reader believes that there is an inherent difference between the two people (that is, a hierarchy) that requires that certain behavioral norms be followed even if the boss requests that they not be followed. Though in the case of watching TV most people felt it was ok for the maid to sit on the couch, Brazilians generally showed themselves to be against the use of "you" rather than "madame" for the maid to refer to her employer.
Of course, that situation is a bit difficult to compare to the US today, since no one but waiters in expensive restaurants say "the lady" or "madame" rather than "you", that I've aware of. Questions related to patrimonialism and civic spirit tend to reveal deeper differences. In one example, more than 70% of the population agreed with the phrase "Each person should take care of only what is theirs, and the government should take care of what is public". In other words, common citizens have no business influencing public affairs once they've voted for office holders, a sentiment very unlikely to gain support among 3/4ths of Americans. Though it received far less support, the following phrase is shocking for the fact that anyone, anywhere, could possibly agree with it: "If someone is elected to a public office, he or she should use it for his or her own benefit, as if it were his or her property". 17% of Brazilians agree with statement, which appears to legitimate corruption and is utterly at odds with the idea that public office belongs to the public, with its occupants merely passers-by that are responsible to the people. Brazilian politics is undoubtedly corrupt compared to US politics (which is not to say that US politics is not very corrupt; only that Brazilian corruption and use of office for personal enrichment is quite a bit more shocking, universal and unpunished).
Other useful results, generally expected, include:
-Brazilians typically trust their family members to a great degree, but trust no one else, including friends, neighbors and colleagues (a fact that can be said to inhibit the development of non-family businesses, associations, NGOs, advocacy groups, etc).
-A majority of Brazilians believes that their destiny is in God's hands, and that the influence of destiny is more powerful than their ability to counter it (that is to say, relax and don't blame yourself if you can't achieve what you'd like).
-In perhaps the greatest point of departure between Brazil and the US, Brazilians have a far greater propensity to trust the government (ironically, given its corruption and the same Brazilians' negative evaluation of government performance) over the private sector, and a surprising number of people are in favor of government censorship of the opposition, government price controls and more.
-A majority of Brazilians admit to racial bias indirectly (for example, by answering the question "Which of these men would you want your daughter to marry?" by selecting a white mechanic over a black lawyer or teacher), adding interesting data to the old debate about whether Brazil is a racist or a classist country (why can't it be both?).
Though some individual numbers manage to shock, the thrust of the book is mostly to confirm through rigorous surveys what many people were already saying about the country. But as obvious as some results may seem, probably none of the clichés about Brazil are without their critics, but these critics now have large amounts of survey data straight from the mouths of the Brazilian people to contend with. The book succeeds in painting a picture that is somewhat troubling for Brazilian democracy, given the large number of citizens that do not believe in basic concepts like equal rights/impersonal treatment of citizens, civic spirit (that is, common citizens banding together to solve their problems with or without government help) and the basic idea of public service (as opposed to private enrichment), and so much more. The book, however, goes beyond merely painting a picture of Brazil and tries to take a look at where all this is going and how it might be best resolved. And this is precisely where it starts to get a bit less satisfying.
Now, I don't know a great deal about statistics. But I read Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, who is listed as one of Almeida's influences in doing the research and writing the book. What I most remember from Putnam is the intense rigor of his statistical analysis (probably everything I understand about what you do and don't know from reading statistics comes from reading Putnam). When there is a potential whole in Putnam's argument, he sorts out as much evidence as he can for and against. He looks at all the possible counter explanations to his hypotheses. For example, if Putnam states that old people trust their friends and neighbors more than young people in 2010, he will then go on at length to make sure we know everything we can about whether this is difference is a result of what generation we are looking at (that is, the characteristic is due to when that person was born, and probably won't change in the person's lifetime) or a difference due to age itself (that is, younger people will start to trust their friends more as they age, and in the future they will come to resemble today's old people). Almeida does not show much interest in these differences in explanation, and appears to attribute almost every difference between young and old people to generation (that is, he believes that the attitudes of today's young people will be the attitudes of tomorrow's old people).
One point made in the book over and over again (in every chapter) is the difference that education level makes. Generally, the attitudes that Almeida mostly characterizes as "backwards", such as low trust in non-family members, high tolerance for corruption, and a worldview strongly influenced by belief in hierarchy and destiny, and trust in the federal government as the solution to Brazil's problems, are associated with low education levels. Time after time, he notes that education is the solution to Brazil's problems. On page 120 he makes a typical comment after a quick discussion of Brazilian fatalism: "Consequently, the obvious recommendation for those that want to combat this mentality is: universalize higher education". Somewhat shockingly (to me, anyway), nowhere in the entire book does he ever entertain the idea that correlation might not be causality in this case. The idea is simple: what if people that don't believe in destiny are more likely to pursue higher education?
It's not a crazy thought, since someone who thinks his future is firmly in god's hands may be less incentivized to work hard to improve his lot. Both backwards thinking and a lack of education could be the result of the same common third factor... perhaps poverty itself, or a cultural value system that would resist the effects of higher education. And it's not a trivial nit-pick either; the Brazilian educational system is already inefficient, with higher spending relative to results achieved than its Latin American neighbors. Yet Almeida doesn't show any interest in actually demonstrating one of the most belabored points of his book, that Brazilian backwardness will be solved by churning everyone through the university mill. Here are a few reasons why he might be wrong that higher education provides a solution to many of Brazil's anti-democratic tendencies:
- Students that come from families with "backwards" value systems may either be unable to absorb new ideas in universities, or perhaps unwilling to.
- The expansion of higher education would invariably result (or actually, is resulting) in a great drop-off in quality of teaching, meaning that diplomas get handed out, but values don't change and nothing gets learned.
- Universalizing higher education means pushing the worst students into the system, without any promise that they'll get something out of it.
And I'm sure there are more concerns we should have here too. I currently teach at a very low-quality higher education institution in rural Bahia, which is basically home to the most "backwards" people that Almeida manages to find in his survey. From my experience, I feel at liberty to speculate that the university experience is not fundamentally changing these students' values. They enter the school wanted to avoid homework, spend their classtime in idle conversation, and fight the teacher at every step when he or she tries to make them understand a new concept. Cultural values (especially the lack of real value of education, which is supplanted by the value of a diploma and a higher salary) prior to their entry in the university appear to prevent these students from obtaining the benefits that Almeida predicts they will have. Thought there may be some positive results of the four years they spend there, I suspect that many will just get their diploma (for it's a private school, and they have to keep pushing the students through to avoid bankruptcy) and run. Yet in Almeida's universe, anyone studying higher education is on the fast track to contributing to an enlightened and democratic Brazil...
At one point, Almeida makes an incredibly naïve statement, in my opinion, to the effect of "Perhaps by the time higher education is universal in Brazil, all American students will have master's degrees." Given that only 30% of Americans have a four-year degree, this is not going to happen anytime soon, and I'm not even sure that an increase in this number is a tendency, much less an eventuality. In my opinion, he is simply out of his depths and needs to do a lot more research specifically about education in order to make any sort of credible claims about how higher education is going to solve Brazil's problems.
The data in the book is extremely interesting and essential for anyone that wants to understand Brazil better. Almeida's text, however, generally ranges from explicit description of the data ("as we can see in the table, 87% of people believe...") to unsubstantiated public policy recommendations. It might make for good controversy here and there, but for the most part, the reader might as well just read over the data and decide for himself rather than to take Almeida's word for it.
***
And a final remark I wanted to make, that didn't fit into the steam of consciousness I wrote above; although Almeida presents his analysis as a data-driven test of da Matta's theories, he also starts with a great deal of baggage that make his analysis more than just a come through the objective data. He starts with the assumption (though he is not an economist) that the state is not fundamental to the functioning of the economy and that the liberal economic position is the "correct" one (he might be write in many cases, though not necessarily in all of them). He briefly apologizes for dividing the country into two "halves", one being archaic and the other modern. In the modern half, the typical person is a young, working man living in the capital of a state in the South of Brazil (the most developed region of the country) and has a university degree. In prototype of an archaic Brazilian is an old small-town woman in Brazil's undeveloped Northeast, who is retired or doesn't work and has little to no education. If this book had been written by an American, public condemnation in Brazil probably would have run him out of the country. I salute Almeida's bravery in writing the book with his opinions being stated outright, but I also feel he's gone beyond the call of duty in interpreting his findings through his own, personal lens in some cases.
segunda-feira, 15 de agosto de 2011
Rajan on Brazil
University of Chicago professor and ex-chief economist of the World Bank did an interview with Brazilian magazine Veja, published online today. Rajan has distinguished himself by being one of the first to clearly foresee the economic crisis brewing in the United States, back in 2005. He also published the book Fault Lines, which is the book that most aggressively attempts to push the crisis back to an ultimate cause, starting with flattening wages and increasing consumer and housing credit in the 1970s. In the Veja interview, he argues that the panics we are seeing now are the tip of the iceberg, with perhaps a full blown crisis still to come. He also weighs in on Brazil's position. It's nice to hear from him on the subject given his eminence and track record in getting the economy right. But he doesn't provide much that we aren't hearing elsewhere. Among the major takeaways:
Brazil has a currency problem (no secret to anyone here) caused by a reliance on commodities and the vast amount of foreign investment flooding in. Brazil's real is twice as expensive compared to the dollar these days as it was back around 2003, making it ever harder to be competitive in exports. In recent years, Brazil has seen a growing budget deficit due to cheap imports and tough times for exporters. The solution has been to try to limit the flow of capital from abroad, but it is clearly not working. The banking authorities cannot effectively fight the rise of the currency and inflation at the same time.
He alludes to credit threats, and though doesn't get into it much, he makes one very crucial point: once the credit ball starts rolling, it becomes very hard for politicians to stop it once it gets ugly. [quick background: Brazil's position regarding consumer credit is debatable; Brazilians tend to say it is contained and far below US crisis levels compared to the size of the GDP; others have noted that the important metric is not the absolute size of consumer debts, but the cost of servicing them relative to income for much of the population (which comes to something like 25% of income for many people).]
Brazil needs to invest more in infrastructure (again, this is no secret to anyone that has paid attention to Brazil of late). There are severe bottlenecks on roads and ports that increase costs and hurt competitivity. Brazil is required to invest in infrastructure (roads, trains, etc) for the World Cup and Olympic Games, but Rajan sees the effort as insufficient to solve Brazil's problem and make it more competitive. [As a side note, recent corruption scandals have shown that the people responsible for trying to modernize Brazil for the big events are incredibly corrupt. Ministers are being fired right and left, especially the Minister of Transportation, who spent large portions of the budget enriching his family and friends, and then requested more money from the Federal Government to cover the shortfalls his corruption produced.]
Finally, he produces some words of wisdom I hadn't seen before: Brazil needs to get out of this mess not through clever tactics like manipulating exchange rates, but by actually modernizing its manufacturing sector and becoming effective, like Canada and Australia did in the past when their currencies were made uncompetitive by large capital inflows. Not a short term project, and in my view, probably not one that the Federal Government can manage politically due to corruption, a bad education system, and a host of other problems.
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