The catastrophic situation of the educational system in Brazil demonstrated by PISA and THE is demanding a real revolution in education. The construction of a radiant future for Brazil depends to a great extent on what is done in the field of education. Education is the key factor for Brazil's progress. It is urgent to emerge a revolution in the methods or pedagogy of elementary and secondary school in Brazil, taking into account the successful experience of countries such as Finland, South Korea and Japan, among others, as well as the teachings of Anisio Teixeira, Paulo Freire and Edgar Morin. By revolutionizing teaching methods, we would be able to multiply the number of students in Brazil capable of interpreting the reality in which they live and transform Brazil and the world. Brazil is very far from meeting what establishes the best education systems in the world. Brazil needs to make a qualitative leap in education.

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THE NECESSARY REVOLUTION TO THE EDUCATION SYSTEM OF
BRAZIL
Fernando Alcoforado *
The Ministry of Education recently announced a series of changes in the Brazilian
secondary school to start operating in the country from 2018 onwards. The main
measures proposed by the Ministry of Education for change in secondary school in
Brazil are the following: 1) flexible school curriculum; 2) increase of the number of
hours of students from 800 to up to 1,400 hours per year; 3) insertion of technical
education in secondary school; 4) the public school student would no longer be required
to take Arts and Physical Education courses; 5) falls the obligation to teach Spanish in
the curriculum; 6) the teaching of Sociology and Philosophy is no longer compulsory.
The change proposed by the Michel Temer government would aim to reduce school
dropout and to prepare young people for the job market. The changes would apply to
public and private schools.
With this change the current obligation to study 13 subjects over three years would fall
to the term of one and a half years. After that, young people choose the specific
knowledge of five areas: humanities, natural sciences, languages, mathematics and
vocational technical training. These changes proposed by the Michel Temer government
gained momentum recently after Brazil registered stagnation in the Basic Education
Development Index (IDEB) since 2011 and the alarming number of school dropouts
reaching 1.7 million young people aged 15 to 17 who neither study nor work. All
changes will depend on state governments, which will have the autonomy to define their
curricula.
A questionable point in the proposal for changes in Brazil's secondary education is that
schools will not be obliged to offer all five areas described above. In practice, this will
limit the choice of students. The changes may also result in teacher layoffs since some
disciplines such as Physical Education, Spanish, Arts, Philosophy and Sociology will be
optional in the new model. One of the most controversial points is to take compulsory
education on certain subjects, such as removing Physical Education, Arts, Philosophy
and Sociology from the compulsory curriculum, making the secondary education more
technical. It is questionable that the changes proposed in secondary education do not
consider the valuation of teachers or the use of technology (computers) in classrooms
like the more developed nations.
The change proposed by the Michel Temer government to exclude Philosophy and
Sociology is lamentable because we all know that one of the crucial problems of the
Brazilian youth is the deficiency in its formation of citizen. Philosophy should be used
in the discussion of ethics in politics, for example. Sociology is fundamental for young
people to acquire the knowledge of how poverty and wealth are produced in a capitalist
society. Along with Arts and Physical Education, Philosophy and Sociology are
important disciplines for people's lives. The intelligent solution for high school is not to
reduce the number of compulsory disciplines, but to adopt transdisciplinary teaching as
Finland does, which abolished the division of school content only in disciplines. The
reform of the government's secondary education that proposes to increase the workload
and the reinforcement of technical vocational training are worthy of applause, but the
government does not make clear where it would draw resources to complete this
curriculum, especially at the moment in which it proposes the “freezing” of public

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spending over the next 20 years with the Project of Amendment to the Constitution
(PEC 241).
It is also regrettable that the change proposed by the Michel Temer government was not
the result of a broad debate with the Brazilian National Congress or with Brazilian
society. The government project is not part of discussions, neither part of the listening
nor the school community nor academic. It is a fragile project that will find resistance
from the teaching staff and from Brazilian society as it is already happening. The
federal government says it is in a hurry to change the country's secondary school
bankruptcy situation because today's youngster has less knowledge of mathematics and
Portuguese than the late 1990s, we had 1.7 million young people between 15 and 25
years old who do not study or work and only 18% of young people enter higher
education.
It is questionable to try to solve the problems of secondary education without promoting
changes in basic education as a whole (kindergarten, elementary school and secondary
school). The reform should be made, therefore, in the previous stages of secondary
school that present immense weaknesses. Secondary school is not the bottleneck of
education. The bottleneck is in the entire education system of the country that requires a
total revolution. It should be noted that students drop out of Elementary School very old
because of year repetition, and usually with proficiency, especially in reading and math,
very low. When they reach secondary school, students cannot go ahead and give up. In
the secondary school ranking linked to professional education programs, Brazil is doing
poorly. It is the third country with fewer students in this modality, only losing to Ireland
and Saudi Arabia. About 9 per cent of young people aged 15 to 19 enrolled in secondary
education attend vocational education in the country, while the OECD average is 40 per
cent. Young people aged 15-29 who do not study or work, known as "neither nor",
make up just over 20% in Brazil, above the OECD average of 16%.
It is questionable, also, that the federal government does not promote the reform of
education in Brazil as a whole, including higher education, which impedes the country's
development because of its great fragility. The United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization (Unesco) presented the Education Development Index of 128
countries. Brazil appears in the uncomfortable 88th position, near Honduras (87th),
Ecuador (81st) and Bolivia (79th) - and away from our neighbors Argentina (38th),
Uruguay (39th) and Chile (51st). The fact that the Brazilian government allocates more
public money in universities than in primary and secondary education is a distortion that
tends to reinforce the weaknesses of basic education. Still in the allocation of resources,
the funds allocated to secondary education exceed those of elementary education and
the effects of this appear in the IBGE figures. While the school population aged 10
years and over is 94.6%, or nearly universal, the number of people out of school
between 4 and 7 years is large (- 31%), or 4.1 million people.
The weaknesses of elementary and secondary education in Brazil are evidenced by the
results of Pisa (International Student Assessment Program) that seeks to measure the
knowledge and ability in reading, mathematics and science of 15-year-old students from
both industrialized members of OECD and partner countries. In turn, the weaknesses of
higher education in Brazil are demonstrated by the ranking of universities around the
world conducted by THE (Times Higher Education) that evaluates the performance of
university students and academic production in the areas of engineering and technology,
arts and humanities, life sciences, health, physics and social sciences, and also considers

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research, transfer of knowledge and international perspective, as well as the teaching
environment.
According to PISA data, in 2012, Brazil ranked 55th in the ranking of 65 countries in
reading. In science, Brazil achieved the 59th place in the ranking. Mathematics was the
only discipline in which the Brazilian students of primary and secondary education
presented progress in the performance, although small. The improvement was not
enough for the country to advance in the ranking and Brazil fell to the 58th position in
mathematics. The weaknesses of the education system in Brazil also happen in higher
education. Brazilian universities are also poorly rated in the international university
ranking of Times Higher Education (THE), the main one of the present time. USP and
Unicamp, for example, our best universities, fell in the ranking. USP, the only one in
Brazil that ranked among the 200 best in the world, moved from 158th place in 2012 to
the 226th to 250th group. Unicamp also fell from 251º to 275º (in 2012) to 301º to 350º.
The weaknesses of higher education in Brazil happen, among other factors, due to
weaknesses in elementary and secondary school that does not prepare students with
sufficient qualification to attend university courses. This is the main reason why there is
great student evasion in several courses offered by the Brazilian University. In
engineering education in Brazil, for example, of the 150 thousand students admitted to
the entrance exams, only 32 thousand are graduates. In addition to dealing with
unprepared students from secondary school, the public university deals with the lack of
resources that limits its performance and, above all, due to the lack of a consistent
national education plan. Making analogy of higher education with the construction of a
building and basic education with the foundation of the building, it can be said that the
building will only be able to reach higher heights if it has a strong foundation that will
give it support, While higher education will only be greatly developed if basic education
is well structured and supports it. To erect a building, you must first make the
foundation. For the student to succeed in higher education, he must have a basic
education of quality.
As in the best education systems in the world, the government should prioritize basic
education, and only when it becomes universal should it allocate resources to higher
education. It should be noted that the pillar that supports education concerns the
selection and training competent teachers with professional recognition and good
working conditions, as in the best education systems in the world. In Finland, for
example, where the best education in the world is practiced, the teaching career attracts
the students' elite. The best students become teachers in Finland. Meanwhile, in Brazil,
there is a "blackout of teachers", with fewer and fewer students seeking undergraduate
courses. As a result, Brazil has been less and less teachers.
Brazilian teachers feel a "high need" to qualify to deal with special students (62.5%). It
is also high the number of teachers (27.5%) who resent training to use technology
resources in the classroom. Just over 6% complain about best qualification in their
teaching area. Achieving quality is not an easy task. It requires time and integrated
actions, from teacher training to infrastructure, from the salary issue to school
management. Education is basically salary. Anywhere in the world, about 80% of what
are spent is salary for teachers and other education professionals. With more resources,
it is possible to attract better professionals.
The most appropriate strategy for the strengthening of the education system in Brazil
would be to offer a solid base of knowledge to students in basic education in order to

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prepare them to enter higher education, which should have two aspects: Universities for
a more research-oriented training; And 2) Polytechnic Institutes aimed at a more
practice oriented training, aiming to train professionals capable of responding to the
new challenges of the labor market. This is the strategy adopted by Finland which has
20 universities and 33 polytechnics where the best education in the world is practiced.
There are ten multidisciplinary universities, three technology universities, three
economics and management schools and four art academies. In Finland, there are 33
Polytechnic Institutes, most of which are multidisciplinary and regional institutions,
which pay special attention to contacts with local industry and commerce.
The catastrophic situation of the educational system in Brazil demonstrated by PISA
and THE is demanding a real revolution in education. The construction of a radiant
future for Brazil depends to a great extent on what is done in the field of education.
Education is the key factor for Brazil's progress. It is urgent to emerge a revolution in
the methods or pedagogy of elementary and secondary school in Brazil, taking into
account the successful experience of countries such as Finland, South Korea and Japan,
among others, as well as the teachings of Anisio Teixeira, Paulo Freire and Edgar
Morin. By revolutionizing teaching methods, we would be able to multiply the number
of students in Brazil capable of interpreting the reality in which they live and transform
Brazil and the world. Brazil is very far from meeting what establishes the best education
systems in the world. Brazil needs to make a qualitative leap in education.
To make this leap in quality, we must invest primarily in education in Brazil. In the
Education Development ranking, an issue is inevitable: greater investment is needed to
improve student learning. Brazil is in the last position when the subject is the amount
invested annually per student. In 2012, US$ 3,441 per student of the Brazilian public
network, from primary to higher education, amounted to 37% of the average of the 34
countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD), which is US$ 9,317. At the top of the list are Luxembourg (US$ 21,998) and
Switzerland (US$ 15,859). Are behind Brazil, only Mexico (US$ 3,233), Turkey (US$
3,072), Colombia (US$ 2,898) and Indonesia (US$ 1,809). According to international
research, the amount spent per student in Brazil is the 2nd lowest among all countries
mapped. Brazilian higher education receives 3.4 times more resources than the initial
years of elementary education. On the OECD average, this investment is 1.8 times
higher. The Federal Government is a federated entity that participates little in the
investment in education in Brazil. According to INEP, in 2012, each R$ 1 invested in
education, municipalities put R$ 0.42, the States spent R$ 0.40 and the Union invested
only R$ 0.18. The federal government invests little in education because 45% of the
Union's budget is committed to paying interest and amortization of public debt. The
Project of Amendment to the Constitution (PEC 241/55) will further jeopardize public
spending on education, health, etc. in the future.
* Fernando Alcoforado, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor of Territorial
Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, a university professor and
consultant in strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is
the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova
(Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado.
Universidade de Barcelona, http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e
Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX
e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of
the Economic and Social Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe

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Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora, Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e
combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011),
Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012),
Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV,
Curitiba, 2015) and As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo
(Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016) .