Brazzil

London will host the Olympics next year but this year, from October 5 to 8, the city held the 41st WorldSkills Competition - the World Olympics of Technical Education. For four days, 944 competitors from 51 countries and from every continent competed for medals in tests that simulate day-to-day work in 46 professions.

To receive a gold, silver or bronze medal in their specialties, the students needed to demonstrate their technical and personal skills in executing tasks within the international standards of quality and within the stipulated time period.

In an immense warehouse where 46 workshops were set up, the public watched the young people compete in cooking, sewing, mechanics, woodworking, gardening, web design, jewelry-making, cabinet-making, carpentry, masonry, and many other professions.

Some of the professional competition attracted the attention of the public, who followed and cheered for their country, just as in a sports competition. But it was a different sort of Olympics because, besides the medal, as in a sport, the competitors created and produced: they left with jobs guaranteed thanks to their performance of a professional skill.

Each winning Korean receives a prize of one thousand dollars. It is no coincidence that once again South Korea was the country that received the most medals. Brazil came in second.

Brazil's honorable second place is especially due to the National Service for Industrial Training (Senai), which sent 23 students, and the National Service for Commercial Training (Senac), which sent five. It was these two institutions that educated the Brazilians who participated in the world's greatest professional education and technology tournament.

The Brazilian team's 28 students won six gold medals, three silver, two bronze, and ten certificates of excellence. Winners of the gold medals were Wilian de Souza (Federal District), in refrigeration mechanics; Natã Barbosa (Santa Catarina), web design; Rodrigo Ferreira da Silva (Rio de Janeiro), jewelry; Gabriel D'Espíndola (Paraná), industrial electronics; Guilherme Augusto (São Paulo), CAD mechanical design; and the pair from Rio Grande do Sul, Maicon Pasin and Christian Alessi, in mechanical electronics.

If our federal technical schools had participated, certainly we would have had an even greater number of champions. Their number will skyrocket when Brazil does two things. First, when it gives more importance to elementary/secondary education.

In order to have a good technical education in today's world, the student must have had a good foundation in elementary/secondary education, must master the principles of arithmetic, algebra, and geometry and must know a little English.

We have great champions thanks to Senai and Senac, but the number of those who could compete - only 28 students - was small. Imagine if, instead of only a few thousand, we had had millions of young people in technical school, all of them with a good basic education.

Second, when the young people, their parents and the political administrations understand that, henceforth, a good job will be more secure for those who have a good technical education than for those who possess deficient university schooling. In Brazil, we still divide education between University and Nothing, as if the future were to be merely in higher education.

When one analyzes Brazil's insufficient workforce, however, it can be seen that what we truly lack is technical professionals and not university professionals.

Therefore, if you want a good future for your child, you should consider a university but, before this, think about a good technical course. With a guaranteed profession and certain employment, he or she will be able to consider pursuing higher education to fulfill a vocation but not for a salary, which could be greater as a specialized technician.

To improve elementary/secondary education the political administrations must perceive the importance, from early childhood, of a good school. Also, the families must be attentive, visit the school and demand quality education for their children.

To understand the importance of elementary/secondary education, it would be good if Brazil would participate in the WorldSkills competitive event for students.

The president of the National Confederation of Industry (CNI), Robson Braga de Andrade, with the support of the state federations, presented a proposal in London for us to host the 43rd WorldSkills in 2017.

Until then, we have some time for the families to give their children the incentive to attend schools for technical courses, so that the Brazilian nation will carry out its educational revolution, creating a quality elementary/secondary education for all.

Cristovam Buarque is a professor at the University of Brasília and a PDT senator for the Federal District.  You can visit his website at www.cristovam.org.br/portal2/, follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SEN_CRISTOVAM in Portuguese and http://twitter.com/cbbrazilianview in English and write to him at cristovam@senado.gov.br. 

New translations of his works of fiction The Subterranean Gods and Astricia are now available on Amazon.com.

Translated from the Portuguese by Linda Jerome (LinJerome@cs.com).

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Our loss of wisdom
written by Ricardo C. Amaral, October 31, 2011

Ricardo: A very good article by Senator Cristovam Buarque.


Barry Schwartz on our loss of wisdom
http://www.ted.com/talks/barry...isdom.html


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5 years high school
written by Blanco, November 02, 2011

In Canada we have 5 years of High School not 3 years like Brazil plus we begin school at age 5 with kindergarten and through for 8 years than high school. These extra years make a real difference. Then there are the tech schools with 2, 3 year courses or you can attand University for 4 years for a BA

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Blanco
written by us observer, November 03, 2011

Your 5 years of 'high school' includes a couple of years that other countries would consider 'middle school'. Total # of school years is the same. Brasilian kids also start school at age 5.......like all OECD countries.

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Internet Marketing: Successes or Scams?
written by a.norlina, November 08, 2011

DO INTERNET MARKETERS MAKE MORE MONEY on the Internet or off the Internet? This is one of the many questions that came to mind at the end of the recent World Internet Mega Summit (WIMS 2007) at the Singapore Expo. My ex-boss, now a corporate client, had given me a complimentary ticket to the mega seminar. At the end of the four-day event on May 26-29 (Saturday to Tuesday), I was glad to have learnt a number of marketing techniques. I was also troubled by some of the things that I saw and heard.

There were 10 speakers: Brett McFall, Tom Hua, Jay Abraham, Mark Joyner, Armand Morin, David Cavanagh, Ewen Chia, Stephen Peirce, Mike Filsaime, and John Childers. Each internet marketing guru on the stage spoke persuasively of having a simple easy-to-follow system which guaranteed success. Some qualified by adding, “lots of hard work over a period of time”. Somehow though, with the possible exception of Jay Abraham and Mark Joyner, their systems all looked and sounded the same:

Basically, each guru suggested offering a freebie to lure prospects to a site and into giving their email addresses. Then the hardsell process begins in earnest: A one-time irresistible offer is made online and the specially designed website starts to sell in almost all possible ways (upsell, downsell, cross-sell, etc.) until the prospect yields to temptation and pays up.
AT THE END OF EACH GURU’S TALK during the WIMS 2007 seminar was invariably a sales pitch, whereby the guru would show what looked like an endless list of over-priced products/services. Then he would slash the prices to about a tenth or more, and tell the audience to buy NOW. Many people actually did as told.

I did a quick estimation. Some of the speakers charge each attendee $5,000++ for attending his program which includes one day of training, two days of coaching and monthly meetings for one year. If 100 people sign up for the program, he’d have made $500,000 (half a million!) per program.

Notes:

AutoPilotProfits.com belongs to Ewen Chia, Aesop.com and Simple-ology.com belongs to Mark Joyner, ebookwholesaler.net belongs to Tom Hua.
With rampant link exchanges on the Net, PageRanks are increasingly being manipulated.
Traffick, a search engine blog, wrote (”On Alexa, Compete.com, Quantcast, et al.”, February 06, 2007):
“People who don’t know too much about web stats love to quote Alexa ranks way too much… that’s seen as a silly thing to do by those “in the know”. But still, darned tempting. You can buy better data, but Alexa is free.

“More recently, upstarts that don’t seem too dissimilar to Alexa have come along: Compete.com, Quantcast, etc…. Based on the evidence I’ve sifted through, there’s not a shred to suggest that Compete.com is better at this stage, and some to suggest it’s actually worse.”

I remember from experience that hardsell also happens in face-to-face sessions. And how I hate being subject to it! These guys are shrewd marketers. These techniques probably really work well. Perhaps consumers need to beware! How many times have we bought things that we don’t need but thought we need at that moment of buying? Still, what are the right things to do when one really needs to make a living and so sell well on the Net (or elsewhere)? And just who (if any) have achieved real successes?

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By the way I met Ewen Chia student the other day
written by a.norlina, November 08, 2011

....He simply handed me his business card and said " Lina come and join me. I am now a new marketing guru near your neighbourhood". You better be cool brother .....get onboard and have a real life

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...
written by Johntoth, November 23, 2011

That's nice platform for the technical field. Get chance to learn new technology and motivate to create more inventions. Custom Cabinets

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