Younger Deeper Wider

Today we had an extremely informative session with a representative from Fullbright Brazil, which is a binational organization dedicated to improving the foreign relations and exchanges between the US and Brazil. They accomplish this goal through education abroad scholarship programs. They are a host of individual programs that Fulbright sponsors which aid underprivileged and underrepresented people in Brazil that have demonstrated academic excellence and leadership skills. Many of the scholarship programs are partially funded by the US state department. The goals of the state department are to revive the image of the US in Brazil which at one point recently had one of the lowest levels of approval of the US of any other country. The US accomplishes this goal by helping to fund underprivileged students to study in te US for free. This goal is called younger, deeper, wider. Many of the programs however, rely on the vestibular which is a merit based test much like the SAT. The difference however is the vestibular is based on subjects explicitly taught in Brazilian schools. However, there is a huge gap between the quality of education in K-12 public schools and private schools such that many of the Brazilian elite send their children to private schools. The college system is very different because public colleges are all free and tend to be the best schools. So, many of the students who go to public schools in K-12 are not competitive on the vestibular and consequently either do not go to college or go to lower quality over expensive private college. Like the SAT the vestibular tracks wealth as much as it tracks academic excellence as a result it serves as a gatekeeper.

The US policy on interaction from the US to Brazil however is incongruent. They tend to take US college students and not high school students and have little or no concern for underprivileged status. Its seems to me that if the goal is to strengthen the US image in Brazil then it makes sense to allow underprivileged students in the US to come to Brazil where they can dispel myths about widespread America wealth and elitism