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Sources

Time To Send Brazil's Education Minister To The Principal's Office

A poor education ranking in the latest international PISA report failed to humble the country's top education official, who instead hailed the outcome as a "great triumph."

A classroom in Sao Manoel, Maranhao, Brazil
A classroom in Sao Manoel, Maranhao, Brazil
Clóvis Rossi

-Commentary-

SAO PAULO — What was the most disconcerting news published about Brazil last week?

For me, it wasn’t that we ranked 72nd in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. This simply confirmed that 20 years of successive governments from two parties that thought they had a monopoly on virtue — the Brazilian Social Democracy Party and Lula and Dilma Rousseff's Workers’ Party — failed to free Brazil from secular rottenness.

Neither was it the news of Brazil’s economic deterioration. The 0.5% contraction in the third quarter was predictable. Only those who haven’t been paying attention to the basics were surprized.

And it wasn’t the disastrous performance in the PISA ranking, the biggest international evaluation of education. Anyone who has set foot in Brazil’s public schools — even in some private ones — could have roughly predicted the outcome: Brazil was ranked No. 58 overall among 65 countries.

No, the worst of all the recent news about Brazil was the reaction from Education Minister Aloizio Mercadante, who went on public radio to say he considered the PISA ranking “a great triumph.”

[rebelmouse-image 27087602 alt="""" original_size="800x525" expand=1]

Brazil's Education Minister Aloizio Mercadante — Photo: Lindomar Cruz/ABr

What this statement revealed in itself was the triumph of mediocrity, which characterizes most Brazilian officials. They would rather engage in propaganda than publicly acknowledge the facts as they really are.

“The OECD results show that almost 70% of our youth don’t know enough mathematics to continue learning in school or even to compete in the workplace,” explains Paula Louzano, a researcher af the University of Sao Paulo. “That’s because they’re not able to, among other things, use information in a chart or a graph to calculate an average or a tendency.”

She says the results would have been even worse if all of those who should have participated in the survey actually had. “It’s even more alarming to see that 23% of Brazil's 15-year-olds did not take part in the PISA study. This proportion represents the youngsters who are not in school anymore or that are more than two years behind in their education. In other words, if this whole group had been in school like they should have been at the level they should have been, the results for Brazil could have been much worse.”

Of course, I understand that the minister wasn’t going to come forward and publicly say, “We have failed once again.” Acting like everything’s fine is part of the game. But he could have at least feigned some humility. Instead, he looked ridiculous.

I hope that when they are away from cameras and microphones, officials at the Ministry of Education conduct an honest evaluation of the causes behind such a failure.

They could, for example, take the advice of Jaime Rivière, a sociology professor at the University of Salamanca in Spain who was interviewed by the newspaper El País. He explains that East Asian countries perform so well academically because of “the levels of self-expectation and of respect toward teachers that do not exist in the Western world, and that lead to better results with the same public effort in education.”

For those like me who studied their entire lives in public schools, this seems to be a crucial point: Give the teachers back the respect we used to show them — and, obviously, decent wages.

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Economy

First It Was Poland's Farmers — Now Truckers Are Protesting Ukraine's Special Status

For the past month, Poland has been blocking off its border checkpoints to Ukrainian trucks, leaving many in days-long lines. It's a commercial and economic showdown, but it's about much more.

Photogrqph of a line of trucks queued in the  Korczowa - border crossing​

November 27, 2023, Medyka: Trucks stand in a queue to cross the border in Korczowa as Polish farmers strike and block truck transport in Korczowa - border crossing

Dominika Zarzycka/ZUMA
Katarzyna Skiba

Since November 6, Polish truckers have blocked border crossing points with Ukraine, citing unfair advantages given to the Ukrainian market, and demanding greater support from the European Union.

With lines that now stretch for up to 40 kilometers (25 miles), thousands of Ukrainian truckers must now wait an average of about four days in ever colder weather to cross the border, sometimes with the help of the Polish police. At least two Ukrainian truck drivers have died while waiting for passage into Poland.

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The round-the-clock blockade is being manned by Polish trucking unions who claim that Ukrainian trucking companies, which offer a cheaper rate, have been transporting goods across Europe, rather than between Poland and Ukraine. Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, Ukrainian truckers have been exempt from the permits once required to cross the border.

Now, Polish truckers are demanding that their government reintroduce entry permits for Ukrainian lorries, with exceptions for military and humanitarian aid from Europe. For the moment, those trucks are being let through the blockade, which currently affects four out of Ukraine’s eight border crossings with Poland.

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