Visiting the Private and Public High Schools

All the literature on high school education in Brazil agrees that Brazil’s private high schools have more resources than the country’s public schools, and better prepares students to take the vestibular, the name of the exam Brazilian high school students take to enter university. The exam is a similar to the SAT in the United States, but different because it tests more subjects and because students must take a different exam for each university.

Yesterday we broke into smaller groups and conducted research for our individual projects. In our group we visited a public school and a private school. In both schools, I was thrilled to find that the students were intelligent and eager share their thoughts with us. However, the contrast between the school systems was stunning. In the private schools, there were twenty students in the class, air conditioning in the classrooms, and a guard at the front door. By contrast, in the public school, there were about forty students in the classroom, metal bars on the front door, and not even a fan in the classroom.

Furthermore, after talking to the students it was clear that the public school students lived completely different lives. About half the public school students had jobs whereas none of the private school students worked. Due to the poor quality of the public school education all the public school students planned on taking the cursinho pre-vestibular (vestibular preparatory class), and planned to work to support themselves during the year off that they needed to study for the exam. The private school students on the other hand, did not plan to take the vestibular preparatory class because the quality of education in the school was so good that they did not need a preparatory class.

On the basis of my visit to the schools, I think that one of the greatest obstacles preventing public school students from performing well on the exams is that they have to work to support themselves and their families at every step in their education. Having to work takes away from the time these students have to study. My experience visiting the schools makes me even more excited to research the possibility of implementing a program that extends low interest loans to Afro-Brazilians as we continue our trip through Brazil. The loan perhaps could enable students to study for the vestibular without working, and allow them to attain high vestibular scores.