L.A. Times: Brazil Education Standards Contribute to Learning Crisis

This Los Angeles Times story – also published on the Chicago Tribune last Sunday – was particularly hard to swallow.

A decade after the first ever left-leaning, socially conscious political party took the presidency in Brazil, a grim, heart-wrenching reality still persists for millions of school-age children.

Education levels so low school officials are glad when a child knows how to read and write by the age of 14.

Little appears to have changed since former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) took office in 2003, after running on a platform that emphasized education reform.

I was still in college back then, and I remember the hope for change was so high that perhaps frustration is inevitable today.

From an early age we learn Brazil has been notorious for a perversely unequal educational system, having earned a shameful nickname from a scholar: “Belindia,” representing a mix of Belgium and India living conditions. (By that measure, I was lucky to have been born and raised in the “Belgium” part.)

L.A. Times’ Vincent Bevins brings us the story of less fortunate Brazilians: two little girls in a desperately needy school in a remote area of Brazil – where the promises and riches of the country’s thriving economy have yet to arrive.

Backed up by data and several interviews, Bevins shows the struggles of a land that for centuries has offered everything for its elite and little for everybody else.

But like bad karma, Brazil could soon pay the price for its negligence.

“Educational standards are not only too low for the needs of the world’s sixth-largest economy, but also lag behind those other emerging countries around the world, an education crisis that has serious implications for Brazil’s hope of becoming a global power,” wisely sums up Bevins on his report.

Watching from the U.S., it looks like Brazil’s progressive government is genuinely trying to repair a lousy education heritage. But the wounds of the past might be just too deep to be healed within the span of a decade.