Decentralizing education: a successful experience in the Brazilian Amazon.

In this article, the authors discuss the importance of education policies that aim at diminishing social disparities in poor countries, focusing on a program in higher education developed in the state of Rondonia in the Brazilian Amazon. Rondonia is a region in which people have suffered deeply from the consequences of social inequalities. Many Brazilian social and economic policies historically have ignored regional needs. The education program discussed is at the graduate level and was developed between 1997-2000.

The authors hope that such programs will lead to a revision of education priorities in poor countries and reduce social disparities, suggesting that where there exists the political will it is possible to establish emancipating social actions--even in poverty-stricken areas. Moreover, this work calls attention to the fact that the achievement of such a task requires discussion about the discursive practice brought forward by those who have social and economic power over residents of excluded regions that are considered "inferior." The viewpoint of the excluded must be considered.

The Social Context

Social inequalities and disparities occur not only between countries, but also among different regions within a country. In Brazil, social indicators reveal the inequality and disparity in several aspects of human life, such as education, employment, and provision of health care and social services. People who live in the southeastern region of Brazil, which is considered the center of the country, historically have received social benefits and have access to resources unlike those found in other regions, particularly the Amazon region in the northern part of the country. In the education field, for example, some southeastern universities were founded at least 50 years before any in the north. Thus, southeastern educational institutions are considered the centers of reference for national research and teaching, and are equipped with high-tech resources and more qualified professionals than their Amazonian counterparts. Educational resources, more specifically in higher education, are scarce in the northern region and very few qualified professionals reside there. The regional universities also have very limited resources, insufficient to answer the regional demand for research and higher education.

The Educational Context

The population of Rondonia increased from 37,000 people in 1950 to more than a million inhabitants in 1990. This stupendous population growth was not followed by a commensurate provision of basic needs for the people living in the area. Among these needs is higher education. It was not until 1982 that file first university in the state, the Federal University of Rondonia, was created; it occupied just one building in the center of the capital city, Porto Velho. In response to local demand, the university started expanding its course offerings; in 1990, it opened a campus in the capital and five more campuses in the interior of the state.

Clearly, the situation has improved; if we compare this situation with other regions of Brazil, however, the imbalance of educational services remains high. Facilities, services, libraries, computers, and staff, for example, are still far from sufficient. The state also needs better trained professors. Less than 40 percent of the professors working at the University of Rondonia in 2002 has a Ph.D., and the number with master's degrees is less than 90 percent. Therefore, a clear disparity exists between this university and the ones in other regions of Brazil, where the majority, if not all, of the professors have Ph.D.s, as is the case at the University of Sao Paulo.

The Innovation

In an attempt to eradicate this discrepancy, the Federal University of Rondonia initiated an inter-institutional project in cooperation with the University of Sao Paulo. This project was inserted in a pioneer program in Brazil, started by the Ministry of Education and co-coordinated by CAPES (Coordination for the Qualification of Professionals in Higher Education), with the objective of providing qualifications to university lecturers. As a partner in this program, the University of Sao Paulo, the largest university in South America, was invited to offer a master's program to lecturers at the University of Rondonia. The project was approved in 1997, with a master's program in psychology, co-coordinated by two professors in Sao Paulo and one in Rondonia. The goal of the program was to qualify the regional professionals, who had difficulty in leaving the region to study in other Brazilian institutions. It had five research fields: Learning and Development, Institutional Relations, School Psychology, Human Diversity and Development, and Human Health and Development.

Fifteen professors from the Department of Psychology and Human Development of the University of Sao Paulo were involved in the program. These professors traveled to the Amazon region in order to teach the courses, as this inter-institutional program was developed in the state of Rondonia (the capital, Porto Velho, is five hours by plane from Sao Paulo). Therefore, 21 teachers from Rondonia had the opportunity to get their master's degree without leaving the region.

For the first time in 30 years, professors from the University of Sao Paulo would have:

* A course that involved part distance-learning and part on-site work, including supervision of the candidates' work

* An opportunity to teach credits in the Amazon, more specifically in Porto Velho

* Interactions with candidates who had very few resources for research and few facilities to develop their work.

The curriculum's structure had two important features: 1) All of the credit courses were offered in the State of Rondonia, Amazon Region. The professors from Sao Paulo had the opportunity to go to the Amazon, teach there for two weeks, and learn about the region. 2) All of the candidates went to Sao Paulo for four months to improve their research and to be supervised by professors from the University of Sao Paulo. The candidates made good use of the library and other facilities at Sao Paulo during their stay.

Moreover, the curriculum was organized to develop research that reflects certain regional realities, such as indigenous education, Amazonian culture, mental health, basic education, and mythology of the region. Linking the curriculum to the community helped the students to better understand their region and think of alternatives in education. It was a general curriculum that provided opportunities for social transformation without ignoring issues of students' political, historical, and racial backgrounds, as well as issues of class distinction. The intention was to give opportunities for master's students to research the Amazonian reality, encouraging them to make use of their experiences as teachers in the region while also bringing into play the knowledge acquired at the University of Sao Paulo.

It is important to mention that before this program, all the professionals in the state of Rondonia who wanted to have a master's or a doctorate degree in the area of education, psychology, or the social sciences had to leave and stay outside the region until completion of their program. They did not have the opportunity to develop research on the regional reality, nor were their professors acquainted with the Amazon ways of life.

Some Difficulties

In the beginning of the program, it became clear that the southern professors sent to the northern region had negative views about their new students, as a consequence of the social and economical inequalities between the regions. The discourse of students and professors from the southeastern region of Brazil revealed their belief in their political and social superiority to the people of the north. In this situation, the educators had a challenging task to help construct democracy in education, demonstrating that unequal distribution of wealth is not inevitable and may, in fact, be diminished. It was revealing to hear the southeasterners present a stereotyped vision of the northern region of Brazil. Those from the southeast viewed residents of the Amazon region as "uneducated," "indolent," "old-fashioned," and "lethargic." Such discourse reveals the belief that the Amazon region is an exotic and dangerous area inhabited by "second-rate" people, in terms of not only economics but also culture. Southeasterners defined the region using phrases such as "malaria-prone," "ecological devastation," "drug dealing," "land-fights," and "wild west." In fact, all the aspects of the region were classified as inferior. Furthermore, the academic discourses uncovered difficulties among the southeasterners in recognizing the regional borders of the state. Many times, they mistook Rondonia for the state of Roraima (which is another state, with different characteristics). They did not even know the name of the state's capital (Porto Velho).

The academics from Sao Paulo also believed there was a big indigenous presence in Rondonia, even in the urban area (which they did not believe existed anyway). Their discourse, influenced by the media, emphasized tropical disease, deforestation, gold mining, sawmills, starvation of indigenous people, and drug dealing. Their concept of the Amazon region was characterized by a total homogeneity, taking no account of the differences within the region and within each state. Ignorance of the uniquenesses of each place makes the southeasterners imagine that the Amazon is "all the same." The southeasterners had little knowledge of the food, ways of life, human values, cultural influences, and history of the Amazon.

Scholars of colonialism explain that for the colonizer, what does not belong to the center is just "the rest." Those who do not belong to the colonizing power are regarded as the "others," and their social and cultural identities are not recognized or respected. In Brazil, those who do not belong to the southern and southeastern regions are in the periphery, which generally is perceived to be inferior. When asked how Rondonia differs from other states in northern Brazil, the southeastern academics responded that "everything is the same up north." Scholars, such as Edward Said in Orientalism (1990) and Mary Louise Pratt in Imperial Eyes (1992), suggest that the colonizer has a tendency to classify and systematize the "other" according to colonial interests.

The Amazonian teacher educators who took part in the program also had mistaken beliefs about the southeastern region, the city of Sao Paulo, and its university. They imagined everything was perfect and ran smoothly in the southeastern region, with funds provided for any need. Professors were considered to be on a higher level, living in an inaccessible world where students did not belong. Consequently, the master's students from the Amazon believed that they had to keep their distance from these professors. This caused some difficulties at the beginning of the program, because students could not communicate their local needs, their progress in research, and their development as lecturers. Moreover, the students were uneasy about the time they were required by the program to stay in Sao Paulo. For them, Sao Paulo was too big a city, full of violence, noise, and bad traffic; it was too cold and had a high cost of living. Through the program, however, they began to change their conceptions; meetings, seminars, and conversations helped to demolish preconceived ideas.

It is important to mention that in the traditional graduate program, there is no possibility of a dialogue between different regions of the country. The teacher (studying in a graduate course) from the northern institution who leaves his area in order to look for a higher qualification in the "center" of the country has to accept the reality imposed by the host university. Providing opportunities for faculty from each region to dialogue about their unique needs is not typically a consideration.

The way this graduate program was developed allowed us to construct work that favored the link between curriculum and the local society. We synthesized the new program through three factors:

* The master's students centered their research on their local region (i.e., the master's theses were based on studies done on the educational, cultural, and health realities of the state of Rondonia). Consequently, the values of the Amazonian region and the state of Rondonia would be more present in the curriculum, because the research was done in Rondonia. This contributed to the exploration of the regional history and reality, and increased knowledge of the local needs of the people.

It is important to keep in mind the usefulness of the curriculum as a political tool to promote emancipation of the region and its people; in the process, it may bring about changes in how people view problems and ways to solve them. Our intention was to have the students value their own region, their own voice, their own culture, and the regional perspectives.

* The fact that professors from Sao Paulo had to stay in Porto Velho helped to dismantle stereotypes about the region. The program also helped to create a dialogue that clarified information about the region.

* The exchange between professors from Sao Paulo and teacher educators from Rondonia also helped to expose the disparity between the regions and the inequality in access to academic knowledge. These disparities were evident in the difficulty accessing: 1) resources in the fields of psychology and education, 2) recent publications, and 3) online communication and research facilities, which are available only in large Brazilian universities.

Some Results

The program allowed us to consider the importance of implementing policies for higher education that would help to diminish the inequality between regions, as well as pointing out the need to delve deeper into questions and studies related to the discursive practices and training of teachers. We also may need to analyze the negative misconceptions affecting relationships between academics in Brazil. We believe that this teacher educator preparation program brought forward:

* Access to updated knowledge in the proposed fields of knowledge

* Access to academic resources so far unavailable in the northern region of Brazil

* Research of the local reality, which helped to spur alternative answers to local problems

* Dismantling of a prejudiced and stereotyped vision of the state of Rondonia, giving students and professors opportunities to discover regional values and details of local history, culture, and daily life

* Improvement in the quality of faculties of the public universities in regions that, historically, have had less access to economic growth

* Improvement of the faculty of Rondonia University and, consequently, of its teaching activities in undergraduate courses.

Moreover, the program sparked changes in the activities led by teacher educators in Rondonia. They became more self-confident in their work. They became more familiar with the background of the people in their teaching area and improved their way of looking at the people and their culture. This allowed them to introduce new concepts related to this reality and, therefore, new items in their curriculum. Because they developed their research on the region where they work, they increased their knowledge of their area; they also became more aware of the regional differences within Brazil and the necessity of fighting for equal education.

In addition, the way the master's course was organized promoted interdisciplinary work, which was significant in encouraging new research projects at the local university where they teach. The symbolic effect of bringing together teacher-scholars from psychology, literature, lingusitics, sociology, biology, nursing, and anthropology helped to break down some barriers and also made new research projects on the Amazon reality more possible.

We suggest that what motivated the teachers to transform their courses was the new experience in Sao Paulo and the "new" knowledge they acquired

of their own region. The increase in self-esteem helped the students become enthusiastic about the study of local reality. Consequently, the teacher educators at the university had the opportunity to perceive a change in their work from being subject-centered to cross-disciplinary, and from classes based on books produced in the "center" of the country (mainly, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) to classes based on research and experiences in the north of Brazil (their reality). Students felt much more engaged in the process of researching their reality and started valuing their classes and extracurricular activities. The involvement of the teaching faculty in the students' reality was a success. Students learn more than just the content of a course from a teacher (or from books); they learn about and sometimes internalize their research. The manner in which the group of teacher educators view the world after their master's program, and their ways of understanding and interpreting Amazon reality, are now much closer to the students' backgrounds.

Faculty involvement in researching the Amazonian reality and in validating diversity curriculum is only a beginning. In order to more thoroughly understand the motivating factors and the changes that affect the teacher educators, additional research and studies are needed. We currently have a Ph.D. program that uses the same model. We are studying the changes that this program is promoting, and later we will examine the faculty's further development and consider increasing students' participation in research on local reality. A clearer understanding of this master's program will develop after we finish the Ph.D. program.

As far as the professors from the University of Sao Paulo who took part in this program are concerned, we can say that their involvement in the program gave them the opportunity to have contact with the Amazonian reality. This brought about several benefits. They have broader knowledge of the region, including the people's values, culture, and needs. This was acquired through: 1) data collected in the developed research; 2) their visit to Porto Velho, where they had to teach the program courses; and 3) contact with the supervisees' world, not only during the academic supervision, but also during informal contact with other people of the region, regional food, traditional celebrations, etc.

The 30-month program afforded several opportunities for circulating information about the research of every master's student. Besides participation in the thesis examination board and research seminars, file professors from Sao Paulo could visualize the extent of their work and the complexity of the Amazon. It is important to mention that we organized two books of the students' theses, which were published by a publishing house in Sao Paulo. By "diving into" Brazilian history, we helped to question the prejudices and stereotypes that were held at the beginning of the program. The professors from Silo Paulo started respecting and defending the values of the Amazon region. By taking part in the development of the region and believing in the capacity of the students, they were starting a new phase in the construction of their knowledge. Professors could behave as co-participants in the academic, pedagogic, and social achievements of the teacher educators. If one compares the 30 first monographs written by the students at the beginning of the program with their theses written at its end (30 months later), one can verify the academic and intellectual progress. A good library, laboratories, professor supervision, and a new approach to research contributed to this growth.

The program was constantly being evaluated through the process of planning the actions and the structure of the program, trips of the professors to the Amazon, trips of the teacher educators to Silo Paulo, qualifying examinations, and defending theses. The 15 professors from the University of Sao Paulo became a well-organized team that could work in harmony, getting together periodically in order to find solutions to difficulties and proposing procedures for the theses to reach the same level required by the graduate system at the University of Sao Paulo. This experience also resulted in the professors changing their teaching methods in the traditional programs in Sao Paulo. They realized that with the structure organized for the program in the Amazon, it was possible to reduce the duration of a master's course. This helped them create common criteria for their work, and to experience other modalities of teaching. Most important, it helped them to realize that if one has to face a program like this, working as a team is fundamental.

We argue that in rethinking the curriculum according to the student's world, toward a reality of globalization and away from a tendency to ignore differences, we are in some way leading to a reconstruction of the world in the Amazonian and Brazilian reality. Therefore, the program can contribute to diminishing inequalities among Brazilian regions and among citizens living in the same country. When we give people who live in marginalized areas of the country the opportunity for higher education and to rethink their own realities, and we listen to the voices of the local people, we are de-centralizing the privileges and rights of the citizens as well as destabilizing the "truth" about these regions as they are viewed in other regions. Local teachers researching the reality of their places and publishing the results of their research are not only dismantling a "fixed" center, but also encouraging other people to appreciate the history and the culture of the region. They are producing a counter-discursive practice that questions the idea of one region being superior to another.

This program of collaboration between the University of Sao Paulo in the developed area of Brazil, and the University of Rondonia in the Amazon, an underdeveloped region, stimulated reflection on the consequences of educational policy for the social and academic world, and suggested ways of diminishing educational disparities in our country. There is more to learn, but we believe we are moving in the right direction.

References

Freire, P. (1983). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Penguin.

Pratt, M. L. (1992). Imperial eyes: Travel writing and transculturalism. London: Routledge.

Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.

Note: A version of this article originally appeared as "Decentralizing Education and Diminishing Social Disparities in Brazil: When the Margin Goes to the Centre and the Centre Goes to the Margin," published in KJES, Kakatiya Journal of English Studies, Kakatiya University-India, Vol. 22 (December 2002).

Marilene Proenca is a psychologist and Professor, Department of School Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Sao Paolo, Brazil. Miguel Neneve is Professor of Literature, University of Rondonia, Porto Velho, Brazil.