Since the Dr. José Borba Elementary School in the small town of Santa Maria da Vitória in the interior of Bahia had its inaugural class given by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 1995, the 395-student institution has not only gained notoriety, but also a series of benefits. In the wake of the presidential visit, the state elementary school has received new equipment, plenty of instructional material with a satellite dish and a top of the line videocassette system on its way.

However, when the new school year started last February, Necy Braga, Dr. José Borba's director, was dealing with a serious problem: she had no teachers for several classes and students were at risk of missing an entire school year. The teaching staff, which was already small, has shrunk to six after the recent retirement of five teachers. And the six remaining instructors were working 40 hours week with each one in charge of 16 classes. The Escola Estadual de Primeiro Grau Dr. José Borba's story is emblematic of the sorry state of education in Brazil. With a philosopher-sociologist in the presidency, meaningful and lengthy discussions have been made about the subject, and there have been constant promises of improvement. Reasonable money is even being spent, but the results have been dismal.

On paper, Brazil offers the best education in the world. The constitution assures free and compulsory education for every child from age 7 to 14. In the South and Southeast, there is plenty of educational opportunity for everybody, and 95% of children enroll on first grade when it is time to do this. Even in the poorer states of the Northeast, enrollment for beginners can reach 80%. The problem starts in second grade, since a quarter of students never reach that level. On average, children frequent school for 8.4 years, but are not able to move beyond the fifth grade. The differences between the South and the Northeast are striking. While in the South the illiteracy rate is 10% — a number close to that in the First World — in the Northeast, the situation is much closer to that of Africa.

There are around 40 million children attending primeiro grau (equivalent to an eight-year elementary school) and segundo grau (secondary school including grade 9 to 12) in Brazil. Statistical data from UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) show that only 33% of students who enter first grade stay in school until the end of eighth grade, taking an average of 11 years to complete the 8-year series. In basic education, Brazilians are in last place in Latin America. Eleven million students fail the grade every year.

Official data just-released by UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) in its 1997 report on the situation of children around the world show that 5 million Brazilian children from ages 5 to 14 are already working, despite the fact that it is illegal to work in Brazil before the age of 15. The study was done in 1995 and 1996 with working children from São Paulo, Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais state), Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul), Goiânia (Goiás), Recife (Pernambuco), and Belém (Pará). One third of these children started working before they were 10 years old. Generally they have to work to help their families make ends meet. Among them, the rate of repeating the year in school is between 60% and 70%.

Since the beginning of the century illiteracy in the country has been decreasing at a rate of 6% a decade. While in the first decade of this century, 65% of the population was illiterate, this number had fallen to 39% in 1960, 33.1% in 1970, 25.5% in 1980 and 20% in 1990.

Despite the fact that 1996 was the Year of Education in Brazil, teachers had a tough year. Almost anyone in the country — including household servants — has a good chance to earn a better salary than a school teacher. Alfredo Bosi, a professor of Brazilian literature at USP (University of São Paulo) did a study of the compensation paid elementary teachers across the county and found that a teacher makes an average $2 per class. To make $500 a month, a teacher would need to work from 10 to 12 hours every day.

In some states such as Paraíba, a teacher earns $104 a month, or $1.30 per class. In Minas, where a supposed revolution in education is going on, monthly salaries are $255, or $2.70 per each class. São Paulo, the richest state, is also the one that pays the best: a miserly $2.98 per class. By actually teaching, it is impossible for a teacher to earn the monthly $790 that according to DIEESE (Departamento Intersindical de Estatística e Estudos Sociais/Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socio-Economic Studies) is the minimum a family of four needs to survive decently.

The federal government has proposed a modest minimum $300 a month salary for teachers across the country. Congress approved the measure, but the pressure by governors and mayors has delayed the implementation of the legislation. In a recent article on daily newspaper Folha de São Paulo, Bosi commented: "The primacy of things over people continues. Without teachers who are respected and stimulated, computers and TVs by the thousands are virtual refuse. Didactic books without tutors who read them and work with vim and enthusiasm are piles of paper destined to the trash of oblivion."

The lack of schooling has hindered the ability of Brazil to compete internationally. According to the CNI (Confederação Nacional da Indústria /National Industry Confederation) a substantial amount of workers who studied up to sixth grade are unable to properly read and write and cannot deal with simple mathematical concepts, such as multiplying or dividing. Hurt by the lack of schooling of their workers — it is estimated that this is responsible for a 20% reduction in productivity — many companies are creating their own schools inside the factories to teach courses from basic education to high school.

Even Bolivia and Uruguay, considered less developed than Brazil, are in much better shape educationally. For every 100 students in Uruguay, 86 conclude the eighth grade. In Bolivia, a country with a per-capita GDP (Gross Domestic Product) three times smaller than Brazil's — $1,531 compared to Brazil's $4,951— twice as many students (64%) stay in school until the end of primeiro grau.

And the main problem is not money. Following Mexico, which uses 5.2% of its GDP, Brazil is the second biggest spender in education in Latin America, dedicating 4.6% of its GDP, and 17.7% of the federal budget to this sector. Why, despite spending $26.6 billion last year, is the education system in Brazil still so dismal? According to the MEC (Ministério da Educação e Desportos/Ministry of Education and Sports), the money applied hasn't been enough to improve the situation because the resources have been badly distributed, badly administered, and in many cases, used for other purposes.

"Money diversion is very common," says Eunice Ribeiro Durham, MEC's secretary of education policy. "Municipalities use the money in their truck fleets, they build roads, they pave streets and so on." The IPEA (Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada/Institute of Applied Economic Research) estimates that 50% of all resources destined for education is diverted to something else or is simply embezzled.

Nobody is happy with this situation starting with Paulo Renato Souza, the federal education minister, who likes to point out that the educational chaos is just a mirror of the social injustice that permeates the country. The minister has repeatedly talked about the need to improve education and the ways he intends to do it. One of his first measures was to start a media campaign with the catchy slogan "Wake Up, Brazil. It's Time to Go to School," to make society aware of the problem.

Souza says that his main achievement was the creation of the Development Fund for Fundamental Teaching and Teachers Valorization, which should be implemented in all states by January 1998. The Fund was incorporated into the constitution and mandates that states and municipalities put aside 15% of their annual budget for basic schooling.

The ministry has been monitoring the learning of students via SAEB (Sistema Nacional de Avaliação de Ensino Básico/National System of Basic Teaching Evaluation). At the end of last year, the federal government also started to gauge the quality of college instruction thanks to the so-called provão (big exam), a voluntary test taken by students at the end of the school year that will give subsidies to the CNE (Conselho Nacional de Educação/National Education Counsel) in order for the body to decide on renewal of licenses to offer courses.

"It is important to stress the importance of the approval, after eight long years, of the Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação (Law of Directives and Bases of Education)," says Souza. "Here is a law that is clear, direct and that opens new possibilities in all levels of teaching. Thanks to this law, students will be able to enter college without a vestibular." Many people are betting on the new Lei de Diretrizes e Bases to help turn the situation around. Approved in December by Congress, the legislation gives schools much more freedom to elaborate their own curricula than before. Very few schools, however, had the time to adapt to the new rules for the current school year, since they were approved so late in the year.

Nowadays, the only way to get into a college in Brazil is via a multiple-choice test called the vestibular. The government, for the first time this year, will have a national test for students finishing high school. The education minister hopes that the results will be used by colleges as one of the criteria to fill their vacancies. The vestibular practice has created a very profitable industry that prepares students to pass the test.

In an interview with Jornal do Brasil in February, minister Paulo Renato Souza assessed the situation of education in Brazil: "We have good quality public universities. In the last 25 years we were able to create the best system of post-graduation of any developing country. But we also have low quality colleges and very serious problems in the primary and secondary levels, in public and private schools. I would say that our big problem is the quality of teaching in the elementary school. The level of evasion and years being repeated is way too high."

Souza says the problems have been accumulating for decades. "In 1960, we had a good public school system, but only 60% of the children aged 7 to 14 were in school. Today 95% of these children are in school. We lost the quality due to the lack of resources that didn't match the system's necessary expansion. We need to break this circle. Our system is socially perverse because it discriminates. Only 50% of the students finish elementary school, but those who conclude get a quality education. We had a closed model in which we had the luxury of taking care of a high quality little segment and practically abandoning the rest. But today this is not possible anymore."

President Fernando Henrique Cardoso believes that the measures taken by his administration are "simple, objective and useful. All we need is perseverance and a desire to succeed," he declared. "The government must do its part but education is far too important to be only the government's concern. It must be an objective of the society as a whole. The parents must supervise and stimulate their childrens' studies at home and not hesitate to ask for information and participate in school life. The media, which divulges the problems in the educational system — and that's good _ should also report those experiences that deserve to be praised. Mayors and town councilors need to respect education, and make sure that the funds are well spent."

There has been a series of isolated efforts to change all of this. Minas Gerais, a leading state in the attempt to improve the situation, has a simple but ambitious goal for the year 2000: eliminate repetition of grades. Minas is being helped with a $40 million financing package from the World Bank and is concentrating its effort on training its 90,000 teachers via Procap (Projeto de Capacitação de Profissionais de Educação/Competency Project for Education Professionals). Together with these 180-hour reengineering courses for teachers, the state department of education has created the so-called Ciclo Básico de Alfabetização (Basic Literacy Cycle).

The CBA eliminates the notion of grades and repetition of year, creating a continual course that goes from first to fourth grade. "We will compensate for the problems of learning with extra attention to the children using extra-curricular reinforcement," said Education co-secretary João Batista dos Mares Guia in an interview with Rio's daily Jornal do Brasil.

The state of Rio Grande do Sul decided that the best way to achieve excellence in education is through the granting of financial autonomy to its 3,344 schools. The intention is to eliminate a series of bureaucratic hurdles allowing directors, who are elected in their own communities, to program and pay for expenses without government interference. In November 1995, the state legislature approved the Lei de Gestão Democrática (Democratic Management Law) that put the changes in place, but the legislation did not take effect until November 1996. However, since 1989, Rio Grande do Sul has instituted direct elections for school directors and encouraged democratic participation in the administration of schools through the Conselhos Escolares (School Councils). The state has become a success story with a greater than 90% rate of children passing from first to second grade in the first attempt.

São Paulo state started its escolas-padrão (model schools) project in 1992. Two years later the state already had 2,225 of these schools in every municipality. One of their unique characteristic is the extended school year. While regular schools have 800 hours of classes a year, the escolas-padrão offer 1,200 hours of courses. In these schools, teachers have to dedicate 33 hours weekly to the school, with seven of them reserved for extra-curricular activities. Since 1988, São Paulo increased from three and a half to six hours the time first and second-grade children spend daily at school.

One such escola-padrão is Escola Estadual Padre Tiago Alberione in Cidade Júlia, one of the poorest neighborhoods of Greater São Paulo. With 2,780 students, the school has achieved some dramatic changes since the new program started in 1995, such as lowering the rate of those repeating the year from 25% to 1.67%. The number of children abandoning school has also decreased from a rate of 27% to 7%. Even the fact that the school is close to Favela Buraco do Sapo (Frog's Hole Shantytown), a refuge of outlaws, hasn't dampened the spirits at the establishment. Closed to the community on weekdays, the school opens its gates on weekends so the children from the neighborhood can use the sports facilities.

"This was possible," director Bete Marujo explained to Jornal do Brasil, "thanks to a program that allows students to carry to the next grade the classes they failed, as is common in college. Remedial classes are given on Saturdays." The school has also developed the concept of the environment-room. Children do not stay in one classroom but circulate among them every 45 minutes, the duration of a class. Each discipline has its own room with special decoration and materials pertinent to the subject being taught.

A new phenomenon in the public schools is the increasing number of middle-class students. They have been flocking to them in the last few years due to the soaring price of private education. "This is one of the best news in education this end of decade," says Minister Paulo Renato Souza. "This will help the public schools to improve. We have examples that clearly show that many public schools with the structures they have today and better salaries are good when the parents participate in the PTA."

This change is more visible in the center and the south of the country. Between 1970 and 1994, private pre-schools lost almost half their students. While in 1970, the private schools had 40.8% of the pre-schoolers, this number had fallen to 27.9% in 1994. In Rio, São Paulo, and Brasília, the same trend appears in the elementary schools and, to a lesser degree in the secondary schools. It is estimated that this year, 70,000 students from the Paulista (from São Paulo) middle class transferred from private to public schools. For most of them, it was the first time they had ever entered a public classroom. According to the São Paulo Department of Education, elementary and secondary private schools lost 10% of their students in 1997. In Rio, at least 15,000 children also abandoned their private schools this year. In 1995, 8,000 Rio students transferred from private to public schools and last year, the number doubled to 14,800.

After its TV- School program that only got lukewarm reviews, the Education Ministry is spending big bucks in another controversial program: $480 million until March 1998 that will buy 100,000 computers to be distributed in schools all over the country. Almost half of the money (46%) will be used to train the teachers how to use the equipment. The South and the Southeast will get most (58,300) of the machines, with 21,800 staying in São Paulo. The state of Rondônia will get the least: 200. All the computers should be in place by the end of next year. Six thousand secondary schools will benefit from the program. The acquisition of the computers will be done through international bidding monitored by the World Bank.

Aware that most of the TV equipment from the TV-School plan that included a satellite dish and a VCR is collecting dust due to the lack of interest and training — many teachers never learned how to use and program the VCR — the ministry is doing its homework this time. For two years now the program has been discussed with experts from Brazil and foreign countries. Technicians from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and London University were consulted. By year's end, 7,500 teachers will have finished their training. And to receive the equipment, the school will need to have an adequate and safe space to keep the computers. That means that in the hotter states of the North, for example, the rooms will need air conditioning, a rare luxury in any part of the country.

Brazil has more than 10,000 teachers already prepared to help their students with computers. There are close to 500 computer labs in state and municipal schools around the nation. Since 1971, when the University of São Paulo (USP) in São Carlos started using computers in the classroom to teach physics, the country has been romancing the idea of using computers in education. In 1975, Unicamp (University of Campinas) in a program developed with MIT pioneered the use of the machines for teaching children. Educom, the first national program to computerize education, started in 1984. It was this initiative that gave birth to the research centers that are now giving technical support to the schools.

Educators do not seem to agree on the so-called programa de informatização (computerization program). There are those who defend it as a sine qua non of Brazil's development. According to American Frederic Litto, scientific coordinator of USP's Escola do Futuro (School of the Future), even if only 20% of the students learn how to operate the computer, the program can be considered a success. Others are not so sure. And there are many critics, like Unicamp's Eduardo Chaves, an expert in computers in the classroom. "To buy computers is the easiest way the government has to say that it is doing something for education," he says. For him the main problem is not the lack of computers, but the lack of what to say. "It won't be a computer that will solve the problem of a teacher who is not able to teach well," Chaves adds. Critics have also insisted that the Education Ministry spend the close to half a million dollars put aside to buy computers.to improve infra-structure in the schools and increase teachers' salaries.

The Pyramid