At the Japanese district in Sao Paulo - The second largest Japanese population in the world lives here! |
Public high schools are free, but the education is of very low quality, and the schools have very limited resources. Those families who are well-off pay huge amounts of money to send children to private high schools. These are usually white students. Attending a private high school and getting a good education leads these students to landing spots in *free,* highly-respected public universities.
There is much competition for admission to Brazil's state and federal universities. Admission is based on an exam called a vestibular, created by each department within each university. Public high school students are not well-prepared to perform on the exam, and since they come from poor families, they are unlikely to be able to afford test prep or tuition at a private university.
At the public high school we visited, only 20% of the students go on to college, whereas the private school we visited sent 98-100% of students to college. To attack the problem, the government has toyed with affirmative action and quota policies to increase the number of public HS students or the number of black students in universities. It's difficult to determine whether this is a problem based on race or socio-economic status. There's also much debate over the "fairness" of implementing steep quotas...Should the government stop or reduce funding a the university level to enhance public education at the high school level?
We have been studying the system, the outcomes of affirmative action and quota policies, and meeting with activist groups that help with exam prep, black representation, etc.
Outside of class visits, SP was a huge city to explore...lots of antique, craft, food, and jewelry markets, museums and parks, but my favorite part was visiting a neighborhood outside the city center.
Rubber Ducky High Heels from the Melissa Store.... |
Boca de Batman --- Graffiti |
No comments:
Post a Comment