PEDAGOGICAL CONVICTIONS

Brazil’s Educational System Failure

Estimated time: 12'

Objectives

The objectives of this nano-course are: ​

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• Raise awareness about Brazil’s current situation of educational systems

• Encourage the search for innovation, for effective educational practices

• Provide a moment of reflection, opening doors for changes and new influences

We suggest you re-visit these objectives when you complete the course!

Introduction:

Start from scratch

Concept Video

It's showtime

From the following video, understand how our educational system needs Vivadi's changes. Also, get an inspiration from our founders and experts points of view about acquiring English as a second language.

LINK: http://noticias.universia.com.br/destaque/noticia/2016/10/24/1144860/conheca-4-paises-melhores-sistemas-educacionais.html

"There’re always ways to learn by listening, living and above all, working. But only the one who’s able to reconsider their own convictions is capable to learn truly." 

- Darcy Ribeiro

Call to action

Into the wild

Organize a day of that month to observe a coworker's practice, seek to do it without an evaluation tone, but with the intention of self-knowledge and professional growth.

Write down what happens in class that are often problematic or go unnoticed, think of strategies and alternatives that could help you to be inspired by new practices. If there is professional intimacy, share and grow together with your colleague!

Remember to do the exercise of self-assessment (access below) before observing someone’s class, this will help you much more effectively.

Summary

In a nutshell

Brazil is a country where teaching systems are dominated by publishers, that means, the industries in which books and didactic material are produced. As you may notice, most schools today have a material which are guided by textbooks provided by known publishers.

With this, our culture demands an education based on content production, translating into books, activities and tasks. The consequence is that, in Brazilian schools, there is a great demand to show our knowledge through the quantity of the use of these materials.

We will explain how our country has been affected by positioning itself as a content producer in education, especially when teaching English classes.

According to traditional education, the greatest success is the one that has reached the best quantitative result, we evaluate and are evaluated falsely through memorized contents, without any use. Teachers leave schools satisfied with a class that spent their time painting sheets, scribbling notebooks and repeating sentences without having any real effect.

What are the consequences?

• There is no qualitative interest, it creates a toxicity in relationships through textbooks, in the farce of demanding production for learning, when in fact it is a production to fulfill others’ expectations.

• We produce a lot, without effectiveness in obtaining true results. We are comfortable with failure, because this is not exposed when we seem so "productive"

• At the end of so much material produced, only a small percentage of the students will speak English and actually use it, if they depend only on the schools and materials provided by the editorial programs

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We want to break the vicious cycle:

• This has been repeated in our history and few decide to change it, while the number of English schools grow, regular schools no longer take responsibility of having a better system to educate our children through English.

• A new social inequality reappears: English is learned by those capable of sustaining it financially, whether in an elite school, an exchange abroad or in an endless, expensive, and rarely effective course.

Our proposal is to build a virtuous cycle:

• We will not be comfortable with the sameness, we will do differently to break the vicious cycle that exists in Brazil’s teaching.

• Teachers will no longer be book slaves. (deep immersion)

• Students’ production will have a purpose (authentic and meaningful production)

• Family’s role reverses and there is co-responsibility in education (frequency)

• We will be affordable, accessible and effective;

Self-assessment

A look in the mirror

You, and only you, can really grasp the understanding of this nano-course's main concepts. We invite you to complete this self-assessment and see it for yourself.