Rudely educated country

A century behind the United States, Brazil made primary education universal in the late 1990s. This quantitative advance, however, exposed the severity of the qualitative deficit. Although public spending on education in Brazil (6% of GDP) is higher than the OECD average and that of our regional peers, the results are dismal. A disgraceful proportion of students do not learn on time or, worse, never learn at all.

In "A Poorly Educated Country ," Daniel Barros asks the decisive question: why is so little learned in Brazilian schools? His answer, based on meticulous research, interviews, and on-site investigation in our classrooms, has the force of an axiom: the quality of education anywhere in the world cannot surpass the quality of its teachers.

Written in clear, objective prose, this book's main merit lies in its accurate diagnosis of the learning crisis and its analysis of what works and what doesn't in achieving educational results. As the author highlights with remarkable examples, teacher training, career development, improved school management, rigorous learning assessment, and the continuation of successful policies make all the difference.

Brazil's future will not be decided at Copom meetings, on stock exchange trading floors, or in the depths of the pre-salt layer. But rather in the thousands of classrooms across our continent. As you will see in this poorly educated country , deficiencies in basic education and inequality of opportunity are responsible for the most cruel and unjust moral fracture of slavery in the 21st century.