The discourse on education in Brazil today relies excessively on the ideas of optimization, efficiency, metrics, and rankings. This debate has intensified even further during the pandemic, when school activities shifted to remote learning and we began to measure “learning loss” as well. As we celebrate the centennial of Paulo Freire, it is worth recalling one of his most brilliant metaphors: “banking education,” in which knowledge is deposited into students’ minds as if they were passive receptacles.

Measuring is good, but building a system around oversimplified metrics is dangerous: what is easy to measure is not always the most important thing. Furthermore, we know that excessive incentives for schools to succeed in certain rankings distort the system. A purely diagnostic measure, if it appears in all the newspapers and on TV, becomes a defining metric.

But there’s another important factor: the discourse on optimization and rankings overlooks the fact that, at the end of the day, if a student doesn’t want to learn and isn’t the least bit interested in school, no amount of econometric, statistical, or technological magic can fix it. And that’s what we saw, once again, during the pandemic: even when students could learn at home, on their own time, at their own pace, the “one-size-fits-all” strategy of shoving content down their throats—even if through apps or other electronic gadgets—worked even less. The problem wasn’t the place, the time, or the pace: it was the teaching methods, the student’s interest, and the support from the teacher.

And why do “annoying” educators keep repeating that learning requires motivation and engagement, relevance, and a connection to the student’s culture? The reason is not only philosophical but also empirical. One of the most indisputable findings in cognitive science is that, although learning is a natural process in the human brain, systematic, daily learning in school is extremely difficult. And not only because it requires an enormous degree of concentration and discipline, but because school content often contradicts our spontaneous conceptions of reality—learning involves combining what we knew before with new things, but often also abandoning conceptions that no longer serve us—and this is a slow and complex process.

For most of human history, we had incomplete or mistaken ideas about physics, medicine, and astronomy. Not so long ago, we believed that the Earth was the center of the solar system and that the best cure was to bleed patients. Now, we expect 10-year-old children to absorb the knowledge accumulated over centuries in just a few hours of lecture-based instruction, even though humanity itself took hundreds of years to understand these ideas (and abandon the old ones).

Educators such as Paulo Freire and Edith Ackermann realized that this challenging process of deconstructing and reconstructing theories and knowledge works best when the child wants to participate in it. This is not to say that the child must be having fun at all times or find everything easy. But they must sincerely accept the commitment to embark on a journey with their teacher and classmates, and believe that they will reach a destination that is meaningful to them. This commitment ensures that, even in the face of difficulties, they are willing to continue on the journey.

That’s why motivation, a sense of belonging, and relevance are so important in school: children need these things to build a strong, positive relationship. No app, media center, text message, or behavioral economics trick will create that relationship. What creates it is a welcoming, democratic, flexible environment that is attuned to the students’ world.

And that is why Brazil needs a different kind of school, especially for children living in vulnerable situations. For them, staying in a school that does not engage with their interests and realities makes no sense. It is a step toward dropping out.

For a middle-class child, it’s much easier to stay in school. They’re there to finish high school, go to college, and get a job. It’s a clear and unquestionable path for families. But today, it is these students who have the opportunity to find a more engaging and forward-thinking school, with extracurricular activities, robotics classes, arts, languages, and sports. It is these children who will find more opportunities to work on projects, in maker spaces, and in science labs.

Children who do not come from these social backgrounds, on the other hand, face exactly the opposite situation and remain in a standardized, cookie-cutter school that teaches only the “basics.” And, tragically, they are the ones who truly need a more inspiring school.

We urgently need to change the narrative that public schools are places that only offer and assess the basics

If we try to optimize public schools solely for national and international rankings, these metrics cease to be indicators of overall quality and instead become the school’s raison d’être—a well-known phenomenon in the world of educational research. Everything else—what would help students form positive connections with learning—is pushed aside. Yes, it’s important to measure whether the school is covering the “basics,” but we mustn’t confuse that with the idea that it should only cover the basics—because today, that means high dropout rates.

The pandemic has made us realize that school is more necessary than ever and that delivering academic content through virtual and remote classes—the very basics—will never replace being in school. Students don’t want to learn “on their own time, at their own pace, and on their own couch,” as many edtech gurus claim. They want to learn alongside others; they want to learn about relevant topics; they want to see the connections between school and real life; and they want to feel recognized, valued, and like they belong in the school community.

We urgently need to change the narrative that public schools are merely places that provide and assess only the basics. Providing the basics and obsessing over rankings will not bring our children and young people back. Either we transform public schools into something different, or they will continue to produce mass dropout rates and exclusion, and Brazil will remain a tragically unequal country.

 

 

 

Learn more about the author:

Paulo Blikstein

Professor at Columbia University and Director of theTransformative Learning Technologies Lab.

 

Did you like this content? Share it on your social media:

 

Content produced in partnership with Porvir, in the column “The Future Is Learned”