In Educação e desenvolvimento no Brasil one of the leading experts on the Brazilian educational system has written a book which serious students of Brazil will wish to peruse carefully. The title is somewhat misleading, for the volume contains relatively little about “development,” in the sense that the term is generally used in Brazil, and a great deal more about education than just its contribution toward Brazilian economic growth. Moreira traces the rise of the school system from colonial days to the late 1950’s and in the process elaborates one of the finest resumes of Brazilian social history this reviewer has seen. In the course of examining the school as a vehicle for social mobility he incorporates significant information on the size and structure of social classes since about 1870. He demonstrates that in fact the school often served to stabilize the status quo, and he points out that the growth in school enrollments during this century has lagged far behind the growth of the middle class. The author concludes that a university degree has not yet become the sine qua non of acceptance into the upper and upper middle classes, although members of the urban proletariat and lower middle class are coming to regard formal education as the principal avenue for social advancement.
In his relatively brief statement on economic development, Moreira emphasizes the problem of increasing the productivity of industrial and rural labor and examines the inadequacies for this task of the traditional school system, with its stress on humanistic studies, intellectual exercises, and “verbal agility.”
This volume was perpared when the education issue was being hotly debated in the Brazilian Congress. The first nine chapters serve as the foundation for the final one in which the author presents his views on the kind of national education law Brazil should have. The immediate purpose for the debate has now been largely overtaken by events, but the facts and interpretations the author presents to buttress his argument for a broad, public primary school system with regional variations should continue to be of interest and value to the social historian of Brazil.
