SOCIALIZATION

Child Rearing and Education. Like so many aspects of Brazilian life, educational opportunities are tied to social class. Brazil has never invested heavily in public education and most middle-class and elite families send their children to private school. Education is also linked to race and geography. A white person in the Southeast has an average of 6.6 years of schooling, whereas a person of color living in the Northeast has spent an average of just 3.5 years in school.

Despite the low level of funding, the last four decades of the twentieth century witnessed a significant increase in the number of Brazilians attending school and a concomitant rise in the literacy rate— in 2000 about 82 percent of Brazilians are literate. In 1960 almost half the population had little or no schooling, a figure that fell to 22 percent by 1990. Notably, school is one setting in which females are often more successful than males. In some regions of Brazil, girls are more likely than boys to be in school and women tend to be more literate than men.

Higher Education. Two-thirds of all public monies spent on education in Brazil goes to universities, the other third to public primary and secondary schools. While public universities in Brazil—widely considered superior to their private counterparts—charge no tuition, they have very competitive entrance exams which generally favor students who have attended costly private schools with high academic standards.

The value placed on higher education by certain segments of Brazilian society may explain why it receives such a large share of revenue. Economic success in Brazil is said to come more from who one knows than what one knows, and where one is educated, influences who one knows. University education then, aside from training students in a particular profession, also confers (or confirms) social status which, in turn, provides the personal connections that can influence future success.