César Augusto Rossatto

Social Transformation and "Popular Schooling" in Brazil.

Cesar Augusto Rossatto Cesar Augusto Rossatto is Assistant Professor, Social Sciences, Critical Pedagogy, and Multiculturalism, University of Texas, El Paso. I n Brazil, the ”popular,” or people’s, school serves as alternative schooling for “street” children and illiterate adult students. Many programs are created with local resources; others are supported by nonprofit organizations, or by public, local, and international funding. Many of the children enrolled in the programs come from broken homes, or are without parents-left to wander the large cities of Brazil. Ignored and living as street urchins, young children rely on begging to survive, while older children mix work with petty theft, prostitution, and drug dealing. As these children struggle for survival, going to school is not a top priority. Nevertheless, they do have the option of attending school in special education centers founded by different organizations and institutions. In general, a very high percentage of Brazilian children drop out of school, beginning in the early elementary grades. According to the 1980 national census, 33 percent (7.6 million) of the 23 million children age 7 to 14 were unschooled. As many intellectuals and community leaders have said, Brazil is a country where 20 percent of the population owns 80 percent of the wealth (e.g., Torres, 1994). Therefore, many scholarly debates about popular schooling in Brazil revolve around issues of equality of educational opportunity, as defined by access to school, permanence, and quality. Within this context, some educational programs discussed in this article were designed to provide students with the basic knowledge to survive in a hostile world. This article will focus on three of these programs (or initiatives) that are directly or indirectly embedded in Freirean (referring to Paulo Freire, Secretary of Education for the municipality of SSo Paulo) principles: Siio Paulo Interdisciplinary School Reform, Projeto Axe: Schooling for Street Children, and Porto Alegre Participative Citizenship. The programs are characterized by their utilization of children’s daily life experiences to help them construct their own knowledge, rather than just memorize or receive knowledge. In this case, the teacher uses examples of students’ real life experiences, rather than just focusing on mastery of knowledge. This approach gives students the opportunity to be agents of their own history, rather than being passive and dehumanized objects.

Quality of Education Distinctive Multi-Dimensional Trends: The Real and Viable Transnational Prospects for Brazil and United States’ Higher Education

Knowledge studied in academia is mostly inherited from the northern hemisphere and little is said of the southern contribution. Without a doubt, United States has left a remarkable legacy in higher education, once Brazil currently manifest restlessness, longings, and recent remarkable growth. Brazil built several new public universities and invested in financial incentive programs to enhance educational outcomes. Brazil takes refuge in international support instead of seeking to foster and strengthen internal talent or even attract talent from abroad, which United States has done for years. Thus, this article presents important characteristics of American higher education system and compare it to Brazilian’s. Based on an international comparative study, this article uses distinctive analysis of higher education development and its potential to advance quality of education in general. It also examines and discusses the real and viable possibility for Brazilian higher education improvement opportunities based on North American academic experiences.

Global Activism and Social Transformation vis-à-vis Dominant Forms of Economic Organization: Critical Education within Afro-Brazilian and Transnational Pedagogical Praxis.

Masses of colonial workers are situating their free-for-all labor efforts in a global context due to dominant forms of organization based on a neoliberalist and corporate market economy. New social movements that show concern for democracy and human rights are challenging capitalist priorities of “efficiency” and exploitation. In some places, the representatives of popular movements are taking the reins of state power. Many of these movements are emerging to bridge national identities and boundaries in solidarity with transnational class, gender, and ethnic struggles. The ideology of market competition has become more entrenched in schools placing emphasis on the effects of whiteness from an historical Afro-Brazilian political experience; this article explores implications drawn upon the myriad of social struggles shaping students’ lives and communities, which are based on principles of justice, ethics, access, and emancipation.