The Brazilian Communist Party?

I knew it existed somewhere in the back of my mind, but I had trouble visualizing it until recently - Brazil still has a communist party. It's called PC do B. I'm tempted to believe that they use the abbreviated form to avoid using the word "communist", but one has to think that if they wanted to play down the whole "communist" thing, they'd disband (Brazilians certainly have no problem forming new political parties), or at least stop using this as their logo:



Anyway, they came into the news recently the same way most politicians here do - fighting corruption charges. By now, a corrupt minister trying to hang onto his job isn't news. Probably most of the 36 (yes, 36! there are a lot of allies to please with ministerial positions, so you have to make up a lot of ministries if you are a Brazilian president) ministers are corrupt, but it still takes time for the press to mount enough pressure for them to have to leave their offices, as five have done since Dilma entered office this year. The new minister under fire is the Sports Minister, who is accused of receiving kickbacks from NGOs that received government funding.

Though I probably shouldn't, I am dispensing the whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing, since I just can't fathom a Brazilian minister of sports not using his position to get lots of kickbacks in the run-up to the World Cup. Communist or not, government ministers have one purpose - to funnel public resource to themselves and their allies.

Not Just Bahia

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.

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.

I Take a Class

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.

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.

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."

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?