September 16, 2012
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School at the dump
I asked Mona Lisa (yes, that is her name) how school was—she said they were on strike. In Brazil, the government often just doesn’t pay the teachers. For a long time. I am sure there are plenty of political reasons behind this, but whatever excuse is bologna to me because this is education we are talking about. And it happens enough to think there is corruption behind it. So paychecks just won’t arrive. For one month, two, three…the teachers start saying “then no, we won’t teach!” Some of them continue teaching, for their students—and so you might have one, two classes a day, and then they are sent home.
It is hard for the poorer students to get to and from school—especially if the bus drivers go on strike as well. All that effort for just a class or two? And then there is the pressure to work since there isn’t school since there is so much need at home. And once the children start working…well, they very rarely stop to go back to school. And so the cycle continues.
This week, the children at the trash dump went to school and had two classes and were sent home. This is a normal week. Normal procedure for Brazil. And you wonder why even 28% of public school children in Brazil graduate. The official illiteracy rate for Brazil is 10%, but in the poor areas of Northeast Brazil it is closer to 30-40% from my calculations. The higher literacy rate in the rest of the country averages it out.
Today I set out to get individual pictures, names, and birthdays of the children at the dump. Most don’t know their birthdays, so about half of them went running off to find their mothers, because the idea of getting to celebrate their birthday was enough motivation to find out. The other half of them told me their “birthdays:” 5 of the children have birthdays on Sao Joao (June 24), three on Children’s day (October 12), and two on Christmas. This reinforces my idea that Brazil runs on celebrations—from one to the next. Even the mother’s don’t remember the exact date, just the closest celebration—and so that becomes their birthday.
