Training
The school system in Brazil is characterized by
contradictory conditions. Regarding the public schools,
differences in the quality of teaching and in economic
conditions are large between regions and even between
districts, and in addition, the expensive private schools.
Similar differences also apply to universities.
In a three-year preschool, about 50% of children between
the ages of 4 and 6 go. The compulsory schooling is eight
years and basically covers the age between 7 and 14 years.
95% of children (2009) start school, In the past many quit
already after a couple of years; when they were needed as a
workforce at home, but since the mid-1990s, the proportion
of pupils completing primary school has risen sharply. The
15-year-olds can move on to a three-year upper secondary
education, but only 52% did so in 2009. The school building
has had difficulty keeping up with the population growth,
and a shortage of teachers and teaching materials has
lowered the quality of the education. The differences
between different parts of the country are still
significant. Thus, schools in major cities in the
southeastern part of the country are significantly better
than those in other parts. The proportion of illiterate
people in the population over the age of 15 has decreased
and was 10% in 2008, in the group 15-24 years reading and
writing proficiency is 98% (2008). As mentioned, there are
private schools at all levels. Usually, any religious
organization is the principal. High fees exclude less
mediated. See TOPSCHOOLSINTHEUSA for TOEFL, ACT, SAT testing locations and high school codes in Brazil.
There are a large and growing number of universities in
the country, half of which are state (federal and state).
The number of students, of which the majority in private
universities, was just over 6.1 million in 2009. In 1991,
the number of students was just over 1.6 million. The large
number of students makes it difficult to meet the
requirements of qualified academic teachers and the quality
of teaching is low in many places. However, at a high level
of education, one can now find, as before, special schools
of high international class in different areas, for example.
Heitor Villa-Lobos (music) and Oscar Niemeyer
(architecture).
1979 Democratic opening
Under the Geisel government, a gradual relaxation of
political life was initiated, and some progress was made in
the democratic process. Despite censorship in the mass
media, the opposition in the MDB in 1974 and 78 achieved
significant electoral victories. At the end of his
presidency, Geisel handed over to General João Baptista
Figueiredo, who was also former chief of SNI. That happened
in March 79. Figueiredo declared that he would allow the
political opening to culminate. The following month, 180,000
metal workers in São Paulo went on strike under the
leadership of Luiz Inacio da Silva (Lula). The strike ended
without repression after an agreement was reached between
the Ministry of Labor and the trade union. In November 79,
Congress passed a far more extensive amnesty than the
president had originally planned. The consequence was that
the political prisoners were released and the exiles could
return home.
In the economic and financial sphere, military
governments implemented a monetary policy whose biting
consequences became visible under the Figueiredo government.
The country became increasingly indebted. Therefore, in the
early 1980's, Brazil became capital exports - solely for the
reason that the country had to pay interest and repayments
on its US $ 100 billion foreign debt.
According to official information, in 1985 the population
was over 130 million, of which more than half lived in
poverty and on the fringes of the formal economy. In the
cities alone, there were 6 million unemployed and 13 million
underemployed. The Labor Ministry technicians stated in July
that even the average annual economic growth of 7% over the
previous 20 years had not changed this situation.
Abuse of the weakest groups in society
In addition to the complicated economic situation, the
government had to tackle the critical social situation and
an alarming increase in crime. In Río de Janeiro alone, 350
street children were killed in 1991. The parliamentary
commission set up to investigate these events calculated
that over 5,000 minors had been killed in the same way over
the previous 3 years. According to the Brazilian Children's
and Youth Center, there are approx. 7 million children
without their own homes. The Commission found that the
persecution of these children is predominantly carried out
by semi-police groups financed by traders.
Similarly, the indigenous population is threatened by the
progress that has resulted in epidemics, the depletion or
destruction of their natural resources, pollution and a
systematic deterioration in their quality of life. The
causes of the extermination of the Brazilian indigenous
population are manifold: deaths due to illnesses, murders
and assaults by gold diggers or police, soaring suicide
rates and the tendency to avoid having children due to the
threat to the entire indigenous culture. The extinction is
linked to the destruction of the tropical rainforest, with
the purpose of exploiting its mineral and woody soils to
subsequently transform it into pastures or mines -
especially gold mines that pollute the rivers with
mercury-containing wastewater. This policy of elimination
does not include any element for the recovery of natural
resources, and inevitably leads to them being exhausted. The
so-called "legal Amazon" is an area that the military
considers strategically important, and in 1995 it initiated
billions of dollars in electronic monitoring of this area.
In September 1991, thousands of people linked to the
movement started the Movimento Sem Terra(MST, The
Landless Movement) march in the state of Río Grande del Sur,
where 150,000 landless worker families stood without land,
while 9 million hectares of land were left uncultivated. The
protest march required not only land to work on, but also
that the government used the 4,700 million cruzeiros
allocated for land reform that year, of which only 800
million had been used until then. According to information
from the Earth Pastoral, in 1992 there were 15,042 slave
laborers in the countryside - a tripling from the previous
year. According to information from the Federal Statistical
Office, 4 million Brazilians were found in rural areas
working under slave-like conditions. The marking of 20
million hectares for new areas for the indigenous population
that had been initiated under the Collor de Mello government
alleviated but did not solve the native's problems.
At the end of September 1991, inflation of 400% and an
increase in bank rates almost 1000% led to massive layoffs
in the industrial sector. In Sao Paulo alone - the country's
economic center - more than 1 million were put on the
streets.
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