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 In January 2003, when I was Brazil's Minister of Education, I suggested to President Lula and Communications Minister, Luiz Gushiken, that the first presidential speech carried nationwide over television and radio should commemorate the beginning of the school year. This would offer an opportunity to speak of the importance of that day.
To tell families that education takes place in school and also at home and remind them of the parents' important role in their children's learning. It would be an opportunity to explain the government program for education, reaffirm its commitment to the teachers, to greater federal participation in elementary and high school education, to ending illiteracy and to creating the National Fund for Basic Education (Fundeb). Minister Gushiken made it clear that the matter did not deserve mention on the nationwide broadcast. In January 2004, no longer the Minister of Education, I made the same suggestion by means of a letter to which I received no reply. In 2005 I also insisted upon the matter, as I am once again doing. But I have no illusions that the beginning of the new school year will be an important matter for the Lula government. During all these years, Lula has, as a matter of fact, rarely spoken of education and, when he does mention it, he is referring to university or technical education. References to basic, K-12 education almost never appear in his speeches. In 2004, I saw Lula's speech about poverty in China and was surprised that the word "education" did not appear a single time. I asked for a written transcript of the speech and verified that the word was truly missing. In his first radio program of this year, however, Lula mentioned basic education, saying that its future depended upon the approval of Fundeb and that delaying this would be the fault of Congress. He delayed a long time before speaking about basic education and is now speaking about it mistakenly. First Mistake: Making Congress responsible and calling for the rapid approval of a project that he tabled for two years. Fundeb was planned in the first year of the Lula government. When I was Minister of Education, I coordinated this planning and submitted a proposal at the end of 2003. The President delayed and now he wants the Congress to approve - without debate, without improvement, as quickly as possible - that which he himself waited two years to send to the Congress. Second Mistake: Saying that Fundeb will bring 4 billion reais (US$ 1.8 billion) more to basic education without adding that this will only happen around 2010. Lula did not say that Fundeb plans to apply only 1.3 billion reais (US$ 600 million) in 2006. This appears to be a great deal of money to anyone who does not know that Brazil already applies a little more than 50 billion reais (US$ 22.6 billion) per year to basic education. Lula is proposing an insignificant increase: 15 centavos [US$ 0.07] per student per day of class. Third Mistake: Not saying that the project proposed in 2003 planned to apply resources amounting to 4.3 billion reais (US$ 2 billion) beginning the first year, four times more than what is now being proposed. Fourth Mistake: Not saying that allocating more money for education will do little good if not accompanied by other actions and proposals that are still tabled in the Presidential Palace of the Planalto. The Ministry of Education is not a bank for the mere transfer of money. When the states do not repair their roads, the federal government intervenes. When the municipalities set aside their commitments to education, the federal government merely transfers a little money and washes its hands of the children's future. Besides a Fundeb, the government needs to define a law of educational responsibility along the lines of the Law of Fiscal Responsibility. It needs to determine national goals for all the schools in Brazil. To commit mayors and governors to accomplishments and not merely to more expenditures. After three years of a hands-off approach to the matter, Lula spoke of basic education. But he mentioned two half-truths that together correspond to one immense illusion: that he is acting quickly and the Congress, slowly; and that the amount of money he is proposing is a great deal and sufficient to solve the crisis of Brazilian education, if the Congress will cooperate. Perhaps it may be a coincidence that 2006 is an election year. But after three years it is legitimate to suspect that education, which was once scorned, will now be manipulated with electoral proposals. And that is why the Congress has the obligation to hurry its analysis of Fundeb, but after improving what is wrong and incomplete in it. That is the opportunity that cannot be lost: Prolonging the approval or approving it urgently. Urgency is necessary for education, but it is also urgent for Congress to educate itself. Cristovam Buarque has a Ph.D. in economics. He is a PDT senator for the Federal District and was Governor of the Federal District (1995-98) and Minister of Education (2003-04). You can visit his homepage - www.cristovam.com.br - and write to him at
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. Translated from the Portuguese by Linda Jerome -
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.
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baita tristura
- is just the biggest manipulator, the biggest lier, the largest ever corrupted president, of Brazil recent history.
He is a crook. Just unfortunate that in his fourth year mandate...so many brazilian are still swallowing what he says.