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Common problems
In the poorest region of the nations richest state, educational problems in rural areas are similar to those seen throughout the rest of the country Beatriz Rey

Students from Praia Grande neighborhood in their way to school in Iporanga The hot sun beats down on the Ribeira do Iguape river. Its almost eleven-o-clock in the morning. The motorboat driven by Ubirit Castelo Branco, known as Bira, shoots over the water to a house on top of one of the banks. The students! Are they going to school? he yells. Someone responds from inside the house, and Bira continues on his way saying that the three kids will be absent from school because they have chickenpox. This is the second time today that he has driven his boat between the Quilombo community of Praia Grande and Figueira Port a trip that takes nearly 20 minutes. Five hours earlier, Bira took seven students to the port. From there, they met with Jucemar dos Santos, the school bus driver, who drove them for 40 minutes along a dirt road to reach the city. The Quilombo community Praia Grande, inhabited by 26 families, is located in the city of Iporanga, in the Ribeira Valley, nearly on the boarder with Paran. In addition to Praia Grande, there are three other Quilombo communities recognized by the State Land Institute of So Paulo Foundation (Itesp): Piles, Maria Rosa and Nhunguara. The Ribeira Valley region, home to 23 cities, is one of the poorest in the state. In 2000, the Human Development Index (HDI) of Iporanga was 0.69, far below the average of 0.814 for the state of So Paulo in the same period. Nearby cities, such as Registro, also have a higher HDI: 0.77. The per capita income in Iporanga is well below the state average: 0.9 in comparison with 2.92 minimum salaries. The municipal school system in Iporanga is made up of 11 schools, seven of which are located in hardto-reach neighborhoods. The system serves a total of 745 students and employs 63 teachers, most of which hold masters degrees: a normal undergraduate education and lato sensu graduate studies in Special Education or Language, offered by the Municipal Department of Education for the last three years in partnership with the Educational Union of Southwestern Paran (Unisep). The school system has recently undergone three major transformations. One of these changes is the coming and going of students that live in Praia Grande, Andorinhas and Betari. Since the beginning of 2010, these students have gone to classes at Nascimento Satiro da Silva Elementary School, in the center of the city. The school that was located in the community of Praia Grande was closed because, according to the

municipal department of education, it was difficult to find teachers that accepted living in the region to teach. In the case of Betari, the municipal department of education considered the distance between the neighborhood and the center of the city to be small (6 kilometers). Transportation passed in front of the students houses, explained Rosimara Aedil Alves Fonseca, Secretary of Education. Furthermore, the government body identified signs of slower learning among students from these regions. According to Mrs. Fonseca, there were cases of 4th grade students that did not recognize the letters of the alphabet. Today, these students study all day long at the Elementary School, three days a week an action that is part of the Pleasure in Learning Project, which seeks to integrate these children into their new school. This process is not easy. Tereza Ribeiro is the grandmother of three children that leave Praia Grande everyday to go into town. Named after soccer players, the trio of Ra, Ronaldo and Ruan (spelt this way, as the name sounds) are of great concern to their grandmother and their mother, Shirley. When it floods, the water covers the entire area. We always worry, said Tereza. Furthermore, the family, with an average monthly income of around R$260, have to deal with their childrens social issues. People notice if the kids arent well dressed, you know? I feel bad. Then I have to go out and spend my money to buy clothes, said the grandmother. Mixed-grade Classes In the same period, the municipal department of education also intensified the grouping of kindergarten and elementary education classes in the same classroom. Other cities in the Ribeira valley, such as Eldorado, Apia and Barra do Turvo, other schools have been combined, but not classes. In these locations, there is an average of 28 students per classroom. We are the only school that has combined classes, because we are unable to pay teachers to teach one or two students, Mrs. Fonseca explained. According to the secretary, a total of 78% of the Fund for Maintenance and Development of Elementary Education and Valuing of Education Professionals (Fundeb) was spent on payroll. The Bairro Poo Grande Elementary School, located in the Jurumirim neighborhood, was one of the schools in which classes were combined. Last year, it had two teachers: one in the morning, who taught 1st to 4th grade, and one in the afternoon, for childhood education. Today, Mrs. Priscila Aparecida de Paula teaches kindergarten, 2nd, 3rd and 5th grade students. My attention is always divided when I am teaching. Sometimes I am forced to focus: on Monday, I try to teach the kindergarten students. Each day, I focus on a grade level, she said. In her daily routine, she has caught herself singing Old McDonald had a farm... while also explaining multiplication to the 3rd grade students and diameters to the 4th grade. Even the tolerance between children becomes more difficult. The older students dont understand why the younger ones require more attention. According to teachers interviewed for this report, working with mixed-grade classrooms became more difficult two years ago, when the school system implemented the Objetivo teaching system. Without questioning the quality of teaching materials (which many consider to be great), teachers complain that student material is not adequate for teaching in classrooms filled with students from different grades. Furthermore, may teachers would like to see content that focuses more on realities in rural areas. They have even gone so far as to contact the Union of Official Education Teachers of the State of So Paulo (Apeoesp). According to the teachers, the entity is monitoring the debate on the new learning material. Priscilas work in the classroom, for example, involves four different textbooks, each with different content and a complete lack of interconnection. If, at the very least, the books were written with matching content... for example, material for the 3rd and 4th grades with the same content and gradeappropriate levels of difficulty, she said, as if making a suggestion. Priscila recognizes that mixedgrade classrooms are necessary we know that when the school is far away, transportation becomes difficult but considers the mixture of childhood and elementary education and the use of textbooks to be hindering her work. Mrs. Fonseca, the secretary of Education, explains that the implementation of the educational system was part of a project to improve the quality of education in the city. After detecting that the Basic Educational Development Index (Bedi) was below expectations, she brought the cases of Apia and Capo Bonito, neighboring cities that adopted textbooks and saw improvements, to the attention of the mayor. The mayor then decided to adopt Objetivo. We are now beginning to see improvements. There is a minority that complains, but not because of the material. The problem is mostly political, she said. In fact, the Bedi of the 4th grade of elementary education increased between 2005 and 2009: from 4.8 to

5.2. The national Bedi for the same grade level at city schools was lower than that of Iporanga in 2009: 4.4. Particularities Not far from here, at Emeief Jos Maciel da Silva Castelhanos, teachers have identified the same problems with the textbook system. The school groups grades in pairs (kindergarten and 1st grade; 2nd and 3rd grades, and so on). According to the teachers, the textbooks often require extra material that students do not have. This is the case of problems that ask the student to do internet research many children come from neighborhoods that do not even have electrical power. Furthermore, teachers feel too much pressure to finish the textbook in a semester. You end up not focusing on the students needs, said Edvalda Ursulina da Silva, who teaches a classroom of students from the 1st and 2nd grades. Eloir Camargo de Andrade, a mathematics teacher for the second cycle of elementary education at the same school, has a daughter who studies in the same class as Mrs. Da Silva. In my experience, the teacher has to work to help the weaker students, while those looking for a chance to learn never do. They never get a chance, she said. The municipal department of education affirms that Objetivo offers training twice a year to aid teachers with the difficulties of mixed-grade classrooms. They work with the educational levels found in mixed-grade classrooms and provide suggestions of how to approach the subjects, said Rosimara. She also stated that the majority of teachers (90%) claim to like the material because it requires a lot from students. This is the information that we get, she says. For Paulo Sergio Furquim, a 4th grade teacher at Vitor Rodrigues da Mota Elementary, in the Serra neighborhood, the situation is quite different. We do not hear any of this at training meetings, he says. Considered a leader of the discussion on the Objetivo textbooks by his colleagues, Mr. Furquim has only been to one meeting with the Objetivo team that covered the question of mixed-grade classrooms. Yes, we do have meetings twice a year, but they are not focused on the mixed-grade classrooms, he reported. Mr. Furquim pointed out that doubts regarding the textbook system are not focused on its quality. In his opinion, a city like Iporanga, which still lacks material resources, should have other priorities. Emeief Jos Maciel da Silva Castelhanos, for example, is built on a concrete slab with an asbestos roof. When its hot, no one even goes inside, he said. Mrs. Da Silva also pointed out another important problem: there are no school libraries at rural schools. The books that my students read are books that I purchase and bring to class. Now the department of education purchases some collections that circulate among schools. They act as if the textbooks were going to fix this problem, she said. In addition to the lack of school libraries, there are days that even getting school lunches to these regions far from the city is a difficult task. The Secretary of Education, Mrs. Fonseca, told our reporters about a plan to ensure that school lunches are delivered to Emeief Bairro Bombas once every fifteen days. The school itself is reached via a dirt footpath through what can only be described as a swamp. We are only able to go so far. We then get someone from the community to take the meals to the school, she said. To reach Bairro Bento Joo Elementary School, located near the Quilombo communities of Piles and Maria Rosa, on a rainy day, deliveries must take a ferry and an extremely slippery dirt road, which can take up to half an hour. Cafeteria worker Marilda says that when it rains, the teacher tends to purchase food in the city before coming to school. Isolated in vast forest of the remaining Atlantic Forest, these schools depend on the services of unique members of the community, such as the boat captain Bira, the bus driver Jucemar and other anonymous helpers.

A Library from Scratch

On the way to Iporanga, at the 80th kilometer of the SP 165 highway, is Jos Matheus de Frana Elementary School. Serving the city of Estncia Turstica de Eldorado, the school has entered the limelight because of a small building behind its main installation, with the following sign: Library. Construction workers that worked on the most recent renovation of the school built a shed to hold cement and other materials. As soon as the renovation was completed, the construction crew planned to tear down the shed. However, this was not the case. Taking this little room that had no purpose at all, didnt even have electricity, a floor or anything, we were able to build a library. Reading is what is important, said Principal Haydee Macedo. On summer days, when the heat makes using the little room difficult, students use a shopping cart that the Principal modified to carry books to classrooms. We do not need anything too fancy, with air conditioning. Children take the

little cart, choose a book and go read beneath a tree. Its what theyre used to, she said.