In my continuing quest to answer the question: who will be using the OLPC?, I interviewed Andrea Siqueira at the Center for Latin American and Carribean Studies yesterday about kids and education in Brazil, which is one of the first countries the OLPC is likely to hit. Here’s what I learned:
There is a lot of variation in schools in Brazil, but the two big splits seem to be public/private and urban/rural. The kids in public schools are almost all poor. The wealthy send their kid to English or French private schools, and the middle class scrimp and save to send their kids to private schools too. Even within public schools, there is a lot of variation. Educational policy is coordinated at the municipal level, which means that even within a state there can be big differences between schools. The poorest municipalities get some federal support, but the quality of your child’s education depends largely on how progressive the mayor in your municipality happens to be.
Urban vs. Rural
Kids in rural schools might walk, bike or take a boat 20-30 minutes to get to school. Many don’t have running water or electricity at home, althought they might have some limited access to black and white TV. That said, Andrea said in her experience the kids are extremely curious. She was using a GPS during one of her visits, and the kids wanted to know what it was and figured out how to use it in “2 seconds”, she said.
There is poverty in the rural areas, but it is a different kind of poverty. They might have less money for education and infrastructure, but people are more likely to get enough protein, which can be more of a problem in the urban areas.
In urban areas, which include shantytowns surrounding bigger cities, 24 hour electricity is more common, although far from pervasive. Kids are aware of global trends. They listen to hip-hop and American as well as Brazillian music, although they might have to pirate CDs to get them.
The School Day
School starts around 7:30am and goes until around noon. After school, kids in rural areas tend to go home where they’ll work with their parents (fishing, hunting, going to the forest to harvest, etc). They might take care of siblings or be taken care of by extended family members. Girls start contributing to the household earlier than boys, handling child care, cleaning, cooking, and wood gathering.
In urban areas, some municipalities, NGOs, and churches have after school programs where kids can get lunch, have time to do their homework, and then have supervised play while their parents are working.
Attendance
There are 8 years of mandatory elementary school, followed by 3 years of high school. A government incentive program called “Bolsa Familia” gives parents about $7/mo for sending their kids to school, because in many cases kids would skip school to work with their families.
Facilities
Schools tend to be in towns, are more likely to be made of brick, but might not have windows, depending on climate. Schoolhouses usually have electricity, running water, and a bathroom.
On the wall is a blackboard and chalk, and that’s about it for teaching materials. Kids sit at desks, which they sometimes have to share. There is supposed to be one teacher per grade, but often teachers are responsible for four or five. You could have kids aged 7-12 in one room together.
Social Life
Kids also do a lot of playing. They play soccer, they fly kites. They spend lots of time with other kids. Even while working, often there are other kids around and some level of playing. They play a lot.
The social life is more family oriented. People go to parties with the whole family, not like here where there are often separate parties for each age range. The family is an important social network and important for economic survival. It provides lots of support in the form of childcare, etc.
Language Education
Learning to read and write is similar to how we learn here in the states, but there seem to be pretty big literacy problems. Most kids can read/write basic things by the end of their schooling, but aren’t able to really write full, formal portugese when they graduate.
One of the problems with learning to read/write is that kids are pretty uninterested in things that are completely irrelevant to their world. They don’t want to learn the word for for grapes, because they’ve never seen them, or about middle class behaviors that aren’t relevant to them. They are more interested in words for fishing, the forest, etc.
There is almost no foreign language education in the poorer schools. In the middle/upper classes kids will learn english, and there is foreign language in the curriculum in 5th grade, but it’s not actually taught. This is because the teachers aren’t prepared to teach foreign languages.
That said, kids living in the cities on the coast in the Northeast might learn to speak some german or english in order to interact with the tourists in thos regions. They might learn these languages in the streets in the afternoon, giving tourists directions or advice in exchange for tips.
Higher Education
It’s very hard to get from the public schools into the university. You have to take national exams, and Andrea had never seen anybody who went directly from the public school system into the University. The public schools just don’t prepare kids for that path, although some kids take a year of intensive courses to prepare themselves.
Progressiveness
One of the things Andrea emphasized is that generally, people in Brazil are very open to new things, new technology, and new behaviors. In other parts of the world, where things are more tribal, people might hang onto traditional ways of living, but she said that is less the case in Brazil.
So, that’s what I know. Any mistakes in here are likely to be mistakes I made in writing things down or understanding. If there are any Brazillians or OLPC reading who have things to add or correct, please email me or post a comment below.
