7 - Education, Social Welfare, and Health Care

Summary

In few areas was Brazil so far behind the rest of the hemisphere and even comparable third world countries than in education and in few areas has more changed in the past quarter century. Brazil, for most of its imperial and Republican history, was a relatively backward nation in terms of providing public education for its population. Although the goals of a free primary education had been enunciated as early as the 1820s, the government made little effort to carry out this fundamental task. This failure was due to a series of factors, among which was an ongoing debate about whether the central government or the state and municipal regimes were primarily responsible for providing education. This resulted in few governments spending significant sums on education. The independent empire of Brazil inherited a colonial tradition that was antithetical to higher education and even to the printing of books. In the Spanish American empire, local universities were created in all the major capitals, and the printing of religious works, Indian grammars, and government documents was the norm from Mexico City to Lima from the sixteenth century onward. In contrast, the Portuguese colonial administration rejected the idea of creating local universities in its American colony and prohibited the printing of books altogether. The Portuguese crown primarily encouraged private religious primary and secondary education in the colonial period and forced the elite to return to Europe to get a higher degree at the major Portuguese universities.