The student in military uniform
Militar school is the latest response to solve the Brazilian chaos of classrooms, aggression on teachers and low levels of education. It pleases many people to think of military rigor to control the effervescent hormones of youth, early pregnancy and badly bred boys. We can even go back to the good times of the pennants, kneeling on corn and greeting the national flag every day. It seems like a great idea, because, who thinks like that, knows that they will never walk in a school again.
No, military schools do not impose such severe punishments on students (much to the sorrow of many of their supporters). However, they are able to reach rates above the Brazilian average, with well behaved students who follow severe dress restrictions. It seems like a solution to all the problems, at least until you discover that the only ones who study in military schools are the children of officers and students selected from among the best, in a competition of 30 or even 270 candidates per seat. That explains a lot of the great results in Ideb (Brazilian index of basic education development), but not everything.
To understand why a military school is better, think that it costs 3 times more than a conventional school, just like the federal schools. These are good examples, of course, but the only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that good education depends on money, which is nothing new.
Like the coachman who puts the cart in front of the horses, in Brazil investments in education were prioritized in the university, without basic education accompanying the same rhythm. Large campuses and laboratories were built while the important universalization of basic education took second place, with classrooms increasingly scrapped and crowded.
The salaries of university teachers have reached even unacceptable levels for the Brazilian reality, at the same time that teachers of basic education go to deprivations and strikes, usually receiving pepper spray and baton beatings.
It’s for reasons such as that young people arrive unprepared in universities, without the necessary writing and reading skills, which prevents them from taking proper advantage of undergraduate courses. It’s not surprising that this snowball arrives until the doctorate.
The low achievement of undergraduate courses is far from being the biggest problem of basic education failure, since only 7.9% of Brazilians have a university degree. That is, who makes the economy turn, feeding the mass of the labor market with professionals, is the basic education.
Without prepared labor the industry does not grow, and the country does not need graduates. Without graduates the economy does not diversify, and there is no money left for research and innovation. With no money for research, doctors do not have a job. It was not long before Brazil became the worst of both worlds, with unemployed workers and doctors.
None of this is new, a decade ago scholars were already discussing this problem. A tragedy announced and now some politicians intend to solve with the creation of military schools, which will at most double the irrelevant number of students benefited, which today does not represent 0.01% of the Brazilian reality.
Students beating continence represents the end of freedom of thought, the solution so that no one remembers that Brazil invests badly in Education.
