Business of Education in Brazil

Reunion Coming Soon?

We had a poster session a couple of weeks ago and it was really nice to see everyone gathered in the same place. I missed a couple of our informal Brazil Study Tour reunions. So the poster session served as a reunion for me. Speaking of the poster session - it was nice to see everyone showcasing their study tour work... Okay, I'll be honest. I only looked at the pictures and didn't read the graphs or content. Hey, I'm short on time.

Back to the reunion! Based on a recent email from our tireless study tour organizers, it looks like we may be getting together real soon for dinner or a movie... I'm game for either, as long as I get to hangout with my study tour mates and reminisce on "Brasil"!

Rio Confidential

The study tour is complete and we're back in Cambridge with its lovely semi-arctic weather... okay, I do have to admit that things have been warming up lately but it clearly doesn’t compare to the weather in Brazil. Since returning, I’ve been reflecting on what I learned in Brazil and how much of a great opportunity it was to participate in the study tour.

 

We were able to get out as tourists and enjoy different cities while simultaneously participating in meetings and interactions that gave us a deeper appreciation for the country. This deeper perspective is not possible through an MIT campus-only based class.

 

Since returning, my team and I have completed our review of the for-profit K-12 and post-secondary education sectors. These burgeoning sectors have many similarities to the US for-profit education sector, but at the same time, Brazil faces challenges not present or as overbearing as those in the US. Adult illiteracy, for example, is an impediment to children’s education because their parents are not equipped to help the children navigate their education. Also, the children often times feel guilty for surpassing their parents’ in education.

 

The key to Brazil’s future lies in the solutions that will enable the country to overcome the obstacles presented to it. It will be exciting to watch Brazil's rise as a developed nation and will be gratifying to have first-hand perspective on topics that will become part of the global conversation on Brazil - that conversation is sure to heat up as we approach the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.

Bullish on Brazil

One of my main takeaways from this trip was that Brazil is on the right track. A few reasons for my optimism:

1. The country is a stable and vibrant democracy
2. The country has sound macroeconomic management
3. The country has a thriving private sector
4. The country understands the value of education and is investing heavily in it

All of these elements are the foundation upon which a strong and prosperous nation can develop. In fact, these are the elements that I believe helped the United States develop into the economic powerhouse it became in the early 20th century.

From our discussions with leaders from all areas of Brazilian society during our trip, it was clear that Brazilians understand the potential that their country has. Given the tremendous talent and enthusiasm of the Brazilian people that we saw on this trip, I have no doubt that Brazil will fulfill that potential in the coming years.

City of God, then and now

A few years ago, I watched the movie City of God with a few friends. The movie touched me in a way that few movies ever have. It portrayed a community, ironically named City of God, that had been abandoned by the world and had seemingly lost all hope. The children in this community grew up surrounded by crime, lacking in the most basic educational opportunities, and without a chance to escape the poverty they had the misfortune of being born into. It was hard to imagine how this community could possibly turn a corner.

 

For several decades after the events portrayed in the movie, very little improved. The government turned a blind eye, the community remained mired in poverty, and drug gangs ran rampant. However, several developments occurred that formed the basis for a turnaround in communities like City of God. The government transitioned to democracy, the economy began growing rapidly, and Rio won its bid to host the World Cup and Olympics. All of these developments helped focus the government's attention on helping the most disadvantaged members of Brazilian society, the residents of City of God being among them.

 

With this new focus the government has begun investing in these communities. In the last 3 years, it has sent the military to clear these areas of the drug gangs that used to control the neighborhoods. The government has then invested in providing services like local police, infrastructure, and education.

 

All of this culminated in Barack Obama's visit to City of God just a few days before our visit. City of God had become notorious due to the publicity from the movie, and it was a point of pride that the community had come so far since just a few years ago that it was now safe enough for the US President to visit. Personally, I was delighted to see how this community had been transformed, after seeming so hopeless for so long.

Laptops, tablets, oh my!

The idea of One Laptop Per Child, pioneered in the MIT media lab, provided a vision for providing laptops in the classrooms of developing countries at an affordable cost.  In Brazil, this concept resonated with government officials, and twice the Department of Education has authorized rounds of funding to support laptop installation in classrooms.  Most recently, Positivo--one of our sponsoring companies-- won the grant to install 3 million laptops in approximately 150 schools.

However, after our visit with Certi, which helped support One Laptop Per Child in its bid for wider dissemination in Brazil, we learned about some of the barriers to wider adoption of the one computer per child concept:

• Support: How do you teach and provide a support system for educators in the classroom to use the new technology? 
• Results: How do you measure the results and impact of technology in the classroom?
• Resources: Given limited funding and many innovative education ideas, is the laptop the best place to allocate resources?

While skepticism remains among public officials looking for cost effective results and teachers struggling to obtain support, other innovative technological tools are being sought out in the classroom.  The Department of Education touted tablets as a wave of the future, and companies like Positivo are already making educational tools available through applications.  I hope to learn what the future of technological innovation in the classroom holds for Brazil on a subsequent trip to the country!

Neighborhood Schools: The wave of the future?

Hey everyone!  Me again.  Before I sign off for good, I wanted to share some of the exciting findings from my team’s final research project.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, for this project my team decided to do a case-study comparison of the Neighborhood School concept in the U.S. and in Brazil.   For our U.S. example we looked at Geoffrey Canada’s highly-praised Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), and in Brazil we chose Gilberto Dimenstein’s internationally-recognized Aprendiz program. 

 

Sample programs promoted by Harlem Children’s Zone:

-       Baby College: Program for soon-to-be parents in the community.

-       Harlem Peacemakers: Program that aims to engage youth in community service initiatives.

-       College Success Office: Program that supports students in applying to colleges.

-       Family Support Center: Program that provides individual, family, and group level counseling.

 

Sample programs promoted by Aprendiz:

-       OldNet: Program that engages youth in teaching senior citizens how to use the computer and navigate the Internet

-       Life Stories: Program that teaches youth how to create websites and encourages them to share their stories online.

-       Urban Intervention Program: Program that has engaged over 5,000 people in creating mosaic panels on over 200 walls throughout Sao Paulo.

-       Radio Active: Program that takes ten high-school students per year to intern with local radio station 89FM.

 

In doing the research for this project, one of the things that I found particularly fascinating was just how much traction both of these models have gained in their respective countries.

In the U.S., for example, President Obama has just recently requested $210M in funding for a new “Promise Neighborhoods” program modeled after HCZ.   Inspired by HCZ’s amazing success, the Promise Neighborhood Program aims to aid the nation’s most distressed communities by improving access to programs and services that promote youth development and family education. 21 organizations have already been awarded grants and in 2011 will start the process of transforming their communities into learning environments for all. 

In Brazil, Aprendiz has garnered similar national and international attention.  In 2004, for example, Aprendiz was recognized by UNICEF as a “best-practice” model to be replicated world-wide.  Visits from Danny Glover, Britain’s Prince Harry, and Her Majest Queen Ranja of Jordan have also helped to bring increased visibility.  At the national level, Aprendiz has partnered with the Brazilian Ministry of Education to distribute information about the Neighborhood School (bairro-escola) model to schools across Brazil.  They have set the goal of expanding from 5,000 Neighborhood Schools to 10,000 within the next few years.  For those of you who can read Portuguese, check out their most recent publication: http://www.unicef.org/brazil/pt/resources_14794.htm

So, are Neighborhood Schools the wave of the future?  It remains to be seen.  From everything I’ve read, however, it certainly would be a future to look forward to.

Side note: For those of you interested in this broader topic of leveraging social and human capital, I would recommend Professor Kanter’s “Manifesto for Smarter Cities.”  As someone who has worked in the non-profit sector, I found her comments to be spot on as regards to the silos that exist in this sector, and was very excited to see her mention both HCZ and Aprendiz as innovative models for the future.  Happy reading! http://hbswk.hbs.edu/faculty/rkanter.html

Ok everyone.  That’s it!  I am officially signing off.   Hope you all enjoyed the posts and look forward to seeing you at the poster session on April 28^th.

 

Tchau,

Moira

 

Study Tour Top Ten

Though it’s already been two weeks since we officially bid adieu to Brazil (oh how the suntan fades so fast), you can rest assured that back here in Boston we study tour members are keeping the memories alive!  In that spirit, I thought I’d take a look back at some of the trip’s most memorable moments.

 

Business of Education in Brazil: Trip Highlights 

 

10. Fresh fruit everywhere!  With access to amazingly fresh fruit/fruit smoothies at breakfast, lunch, dinner, on the beach, and at every street corner in Rio, vitamin c intake has just not been the same since leaving Brazil.

 

9.  Private meeting at the Ministry of Education in Brazil.  After a week of meeting with organizations working to affect change at a policy level, our group had the opportunity to sit down with the actual policy-makers themselves in Brazil’s capital city of Brasilia.

 

8. Beach time in beautiful Florianopolis and Rio de Janeiro.  When we weren’t visiting with some of the most influential educational leaders in Brazil, our group was soaking up the sun and enjoying the incredible vistas that Brazil, with all of its natural beauty, has to offer.  All I can say is that Copacabana and Ipanema really do live up to the hype and I can’t wait to get back!

 

7. Virtual roller-coaster ride at Senai!  Just one more in a sea of innovative technologies that Senai, Brazil’s leader in educational training, is developing for the marketplace.  Also amazing: a look inside the completely realistic simulation room used for training oil platform managers.

 

6. Brazilian BBQ.  Before I went to Brazil, my friend gave me a recommendation for a restaurant in Sao Paulo.  He said he had dreams about it.  Now I know why.

 

5. MIT Sloan sponsored education conference in Sao Paulo.  Because they didn’t have enough on their plate, in addition to scheduling all of our company visits, our incredible trip organizers also put on a mini-conference.  Bringing in six guest speakers and over 200 audience members (including Sloan alumni and admitted students) the event featured discussion on innovations in education and how these innovations could be applied in Brazil. With all these educational groups in one place, it was wonderful to see the role that our study tour was playing to help unite efforts and share best-practices.

 

4. Visits to Max school and the Lumiar Institute.  Pioneers in alternative approaches to education, these two schools impressed me both with the commitment of their administrators and the energy within their school halls.  It will be exciting to see how these schools progress.

 

3. Technology demonstrations at Positivo.  Want to see what it looks like to bring the inner-child out of 20 MBA students?  Set them loose in the technology labs of Positivo.  We played with their learning blocks, we made an augmented reality story with farm animals, and we played games with our own virtual avatars.  It was amazing: no wonder they have been able to impact so many children.

 

2. City of God.  Perhaps the most compelling visit on our trip, our visit to Cidade de Deus left us with hope and inspiration.  Two years ago we could have never visited the favela.  The inspiration behind the movie “City of God”, it was overrun with drugs, violence, and lack of opportunity.  Now, however, the favela has been able to turn itself around and with the help of community leaders like Maria do Socorro is empowering its youth and adult members alike, bringing in community partners and establishing community spaces to expand access to education.  Just a few days before our visit, President Obama had visited the favela – it is great to see such a wonderful success story being recognized by our President in this way.

 

1. My fellow study tour members!  I love you all.  We came, we saw, we learned, we went hard, we conquered.  A special shout out to our incredible trip organizers, amazing faculty and staff members, and, of course, Kesha. 

 

Thank you MIT Sloan for this amazing opportunity.

 

MIT in Rio

Blame it on Rio !

I loved the Michael Caine movie, but the movie doesn’t do justice to the city.  

Rio is blessed with abundant comparative advantages – miles of gorgeous white sand beaches, alluring warm ocean waters, exquisite restaurants, -- all surrounded by a towering, lush mountain backdrop. Rio possesses cultural advantages not known in other areas of the world.

 

MIT has to consider starting a university here. Boston is great in the summer, but imagine having students spend the winter in Rio!. Sunlight till 7pm, attending classes in shorts, reading cases on the beach. Our productivity would be so much higher ! Atleast an exchange program of some sort would be great. MBA students need a well rounded education after all... 

 

Let the games begin !

Banners across Rio optimistically proclaimed: "A new city is being born." Its an exciting time to be in Brazil. The economy is burgeoning and the country will be staging the World Cup and Olympics in the coming years.

 

Both the World Cup and the Olympic Games are going to be big challenges for Brazil, just like they would be for any other country organizing two events of this scale within two years. Although Brazil has made strides in improving education, and its infrastructure is better than that of other emerging markets such as India, it is still lagging behind developed economies. Nothing is more important for the Brazilian government than to invest in education now!.  

Government intervention: It was heartening to see that both the Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula administrations have implemented successful conditional cash transfer programs to boost school enrollment which has helped lift many poverty-stricken people into a new lower-middle class.  With further investment in education, progression in innovation will follow.

Private sector players: VC firms focusing on education such as Gera Ventures and edu tech companies such as ezLearn, which is developing an adaptive learning platform for companies that are interested in training their staff in English for the twin sporting events are clearly on the right track too.

Brazil has clearly become the most attractive market for education services in Latin America as it represents the largest education base and consequently the largest market for education services.It’s great to see my Brazilian classmates wanting to go back to Brazil and setting up education ventures after graduating. Now I only need to convince them to invite me to Brazil for the World Cup. I can’t wait to see the country in its new avatar. Exciting times indeed !

Thoughts on the Business of Education Study Tour

After being back in Boston for more than a week, I thought I would provide a quick summary of some of things that stood out from our study tour in Brazil. One of the early highlights of the trip was the Innovations in the Business of Education event presented by MIT Sloan in one of Sao Paulo’s art museums. We had an amazing line up speakers including MIT Sloan Deputy S.P. Kothari who flew all the way to Brazil for just this event. I don’t know the official attendance number but it seemed like there was at least 200 people, all packed into the auditorium to listen to more than 3 hours of lectures and panel discussions about the education system in Brazil. Pretty impressive for a Wednesday night!

Another highlight from the trip was our visit with Fundacao CERTI in Florianopolis, where we saw many of the interesting technologies that have come out of the organization. Examples included an electronic voting machine used throughout the country to calculate election results and a portable device that combines a projector with a computer to reduce the amount of time it takes a teacher to setup a classroom.

However, the most notable aspect of the trip was the broad agreement surrounding the importance of improving the quality of education in Brazil from nearly everyone we spoke with. This is especially true when you consider the fact that we spoke with individuals from a variety of different backgrounds ranging from federal and state government officials, teachers and business leaders.

Finally, I would just like to thank the four student organizers and the two MIT faculty advisors who put together such an amazing trip. Thanks again!