It is unfortunate that the change proposed by the government Temer was not the result of a broad debate with Brazilian Congress or with the Brazilian society. The government project is not part of discussions, not part of listening from the school nor the academic community. It is a fragile project that will run into resistance from the teachers themselves. The reason, according to the Minister of Education, Mendonça Filho, for Michel Temer government measures is that he is in a hurry to change the high school bankrupt in the country. It is questionable to want to solve the problems of high school without promoting changes also in basic education as a whole (Early childhood education, elementary school and high school). The reform should be made, so in earlier stages of high school those have huge weaknesses. The high school is not the bottleneck of education.

1. 1
THE WEAKNESSES OF THE TEMER GOVERNMENT PROPOSAL FOR
REFORM OF HIGH SCHOOL IN BRAZIL
Fernando Alcoforado *
The current education system structure in Brazil consists of basic education (Early
childhood education, elementary school and high school) and higher education. The
municipalities have the responsibility to act in Early childhood education and
elementary school and the states and the Federal District are responsible for elementary
school and high school. The federal government, in turn, provides technical and
financial assistance to States, the Federal District and the municipalities, as well as
organizing the higher education system in the country.
Early childhood education, the first stage of basic education is held in kindergartens for
children up to three years old, and in preschools for children aged 4 to 6 years.
Elementary education, lasting at least nine years, is compulsory and free in public
schools, with the Government to ensure its offer to everyone, including those who did
not have access at the right age for it. The high school, stage to finish basic education,
lasts a minimum of three years and provides a comprehensive training to the student and
may include general preparation programs to work and, on an optional basis, the
professional qualification.
In addition to regular education, formal education has the following specific ways:
special education for the handicapped; education of the young and adults, for those who
did not have access or continuity of studies in elementary and high school at the right
age for them. Professional education is integrated into various forms of education, labor,
science and technology, in order to drive the continuous development of skills for a
productive life. The technical level of education is provided independently from the
regular high school form. This, however, is a requirement for obtaining a technical
degree.
Higher education includes undergraduate courses in different professional areas, which
are available to candidates who have completed high school or equivalent and have
been classified in the number of vacancies in specific selection processes. The
postgraduate studies is also part of higher education and includes specialization
programs, master's, doctoral and post-doctoral.
The Brazilian Ministry of Education announced recently a series of changes in the high
school to become operational in the country from 2018. The main measures proposed
by the Ministry of Education of high school change in Brazil are as follows: 1)
flexibility of the school curriculum; 2) expanding students course load from 800 of
hours to 1,400 hours per year; 3) integration of technical education in high school; 4)
students of the public school would no longer be required to take courses of Arts and
Physical Education; 5) drops the requirement of Spanish education in the curriculum; 6)
is no longer required the teaching of sociology and philosophy. The change proposed by
the government Michel Temer would aim to reduce school dropouts and prepare young
people for the labor market. The changes would be implemented by public and private
schools.
With this change the current obligation to study 13 subjects over three years would fall
for a period of one year and a half. After that, young people would choose the expertise
of five areas: humanities, natural sciences, languages, mathematics and technical

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training. These changes proposed for Temer government recently gained strength after
the Brazil registered stagnation in the Basic Education Development Index (IDEB)
since 2011 and the alarming number of school dropouts that reaches 1.7 million young
people between 15 and 17 years that neither study nor work. All changes will depend
even of state governments that will have the autonomy to set their curricula.
A questionable point in the proposed changes in high school in Brazil lies in the fact
that schools are not required to offer the five areas above described. In practice, this will
limit the choice of students. The changes may also result in layoffs of teachers since
some subjects such as physical education, Spanish, arts, philosophy and sociology will
be optional in the new model. One of the most controversial points is to remove the
obligation on certain issues, for example, take Physical Education, Arts, Philosophy and
Sociology of the compulsory curriculum making the high school to be more technical. It
is questionable the fact that the proposed changes in high school do not consider the
appreciation of teachers or use of technology (computers) in classrooms example of the
most developed nations.
The change proposed by the government to exclude Philosophy and Sociology is
unfortunate because we know that the one crucial problem of Brazilian youth is the
deficiency in their training as citizen. Philosophy should be used in the discussion of
ethics in politics. Sociology is essential for young people to acquire the knowledge of
how to produce poverty and wealth in a capitalist society. Along with Arts and Physical
Education, Philosophy and Sociology are subjects that matter to people's lives.
Increased course load, however, can be seen as a proposal worthy of applause, but the
government is not clear from which would take away resources to complete this
curriculum, especially at a time when proposing the ceiling for spending in the public
sector budget.
It is unfortunate that the change proposed by the government Temer was not the result
of a broad debate with Brazilian Congress or with the Brazilian society. The
government project is not part of discussions, not part of listening from the school nor
the academic community. It is a fragile project that will run into resistance from the
teachers themselves. The reason, according to the Minister of Education, Mendonça
Filho, for Michel Temer government measures is that he is in a hurry to change the high
school bankrupt in the country because the youth of today have less knowledge of
mathematics and Portuguese than the end of the 1990s, we have 1.7 million young
people between 15 and 25 who neither study nor work and only 18% of young people
enter higher education.
It is questionable, too, to want to solve the problems of high school without promoting
changes also in basic education as a whole (Early childhood education, elementary
school and high school). The reform should be made, so in earlier stages of high school
those have huge weaknesses. The high school is not the bottleneck of education. It
should be noted that students leave the elementary school very old because of years of
repetition, and usually with very low proficiency, especially in reading and math. When
they arrived in high school, students cannot go ahead and quit.
It is questionable, also, the fact that the federal government does not promote the reform
of Brazil's education as a whole, including higher education, which prevents the
development of the country. The fact that the Brazilian government to allocate more
public money in universities than in elementary school and high school is a distortion
that tends to reinforce the inequality of national income. Although in the allocation of

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resources, funds for the high school outweigh the elementary school and the effects that
appear in the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) figures. While the
population in school with 10 or more years is 94.6%, or almost universal, the number of
people outside the school between 4 and 7 years is large (- 31%), or 4.1 million people.
In Brazil, 38% of the population complete elementary school, compared to 45% in
Mexico and 56% in Argentina. In South Korea, 83% of the population completes basic
education. IBGE census shows that only 5.8 million people over 25 years or 6.8% have
higher education in Brazil. At the higher education, there is a hypertrophy in some
courses, such as law (11.7% of total), at the expense of others who are at the base of
information technology and the technological research forefront, such as biology and
biochemistry (2%), computing (2.1%) and mathematics (2.3%). These figures show that
Brazil needs to take a leap of quality in education. The proposal of changes in high
school of Temer government is not enough to solve the huge problems of education in
Brazil.
* 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
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) .