The challenge of education reform in Brazil

Amidst the fanfare surrounding President Dilma Rousseff’s “Science Without Borders” program, which has universities around the world positively salivating at the potential student income and collaborative funding possibilities, questions about how to improve Brazil’s public schools at the primary and secondary level are getting overlooked. The scale of the challenge is vast. For students and their families a central problem is how to document the necessary tasks and maintain political pressure from the grassroots level through the highest offices for effective reform. Interestingly, it looks like the students themselves have decided to use social media to shine a torch on inconvenient realities. Mac Magnolis, columnist with Newsweek, has an interesting piece on Isadora Faber and her project cataloging the issues at her school. It is worth a read and points to the size of the challenge that comes with efforts to reform Brazil’s schools — throwing money at it is not going to be enough to conquer the challenge.