EDUCATION-BRAZIL: Integration Now Extends to Language

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 25 2005 (IPS) - South American integration has finally extended to language training in Brazil, thanks to a new law that makes it mandatory for all secondary schools in this Portuguese-speaking giant to teach Spanish, the language spoken by the vast majority of the continent’s nations.

This new measure is viewed as essential for expanding the regional integration process beyond mere trade-related matters.

The new law, passed in July, has yet to be matched by similar legislation in Brazil’s Spanish-speaking neighbours.

In order to promote a genuine South American Community of Nations, the other countries of the continent should adopt similar initiatives by including Portuguese classes in their school curricula, historian Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, an expert on Latin American relations, commented to IPS.

In addition to Brazil, the Community of Nations officially founded last December includes Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela, all of which have Spanish as the official language.

The other two member nations are English-speaking Guyana and Suriname, where the official language is Dutch, but the most commonly spoken language on a daily basis is Sranan.

The Brazilian law, which entered into force this month, obliges all of the country’s secondary schools to offer Spanish language courses, although they have a period of five years to fully implement the measure.

For secondary school students, however, studying Spanish is still optional, and they can freely choose to learn a different foreign language instead.

The five-year grace period is needed because of a shortage of Spanish teachers in Brazil, explained Education Minister Fernando Haddad.

Over 12,000 more teachers will need to be trained in order for every secondary school in the country to offer Spanish courses, and this will obviously require considerable time and effort, he noted.

In addition, the current capacity of university language departments to train new Spanish teachers falls significantly short of the demand created by the new legislation, admitted Lucia Lodi, the Education Ministry’s director of secondary school studies.

Besides encouraging universities to expand course offerings in this area, teachers of other subjects will be given the opportunity to receive short, intensive language training courses in order to teach Spanish as well, Lodi told IPS.

While some have recommended “importing” teachers from neighbouring countries, particularly Argentina, this would not be feasible, since truly effective public school teachers are either native-born or naturalised Brazilian citizens, said Lodi.

In order to launch the pilot phase of the initiative in 2006, with priority placed on Brazilian states that share borders with Spanish-speaking countries, another 1,500 teachers will be needed.

The number of graduates trained to teach Spanish is undoubtedly higher than this, but many of them choose to work in other sectors, because teaching is poorly paid in Brazil, remarked Egisvanda de Lima, president of the Association of Spanish Teachers of the State of Sao Paulo (APEESEP).

He fears that in the face of the shortage of Spanish teachers, instead of making the necessary effort to train new ones, educational authorities will opt to hire people who speak Spanish but do not have sufficient pedagogical training, thereby sacrificing the quality of education and professional standards in the field.

To discuss these and other issues associated with the new realities of Spanish teaching in Brazil, APEESEP is organising a conference to be held in early December in Sao Paulo, which will bring together teachers, educational authorities, and administrators of public and private schools.

De Lima believes that the new legislation is “an extraordinary advance” that will improve the teaching of foreign languages in Brazil in general, by opening up a new option for students.

The fact that students will be able to choose the language they study means that they will approach it with greater interest and commitment, and this could even help enhance the quality of English teaching, where standards have slipped because of the monopoly it has enjoyed until now, he added.

Moniz Bandeira, the author of numerous books on conflicts and integration in South America, thinks Spanish should also be a required subject for secondary school students, like English. Teaching Spanish will foster Brazil’s cultural integration with neighbouring countries, especially Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, its partners in the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR).

Brazil is an Ibero-American country that shares borders with seven Spanish-speaking countries, which makes Spanish important for modernising its education system, as well as for its economic relations and cultural development, said Juan Fernández Marrero of the Cervantes Institute, which promotes Spanish culture and language and will assist in the training of Brazilian Spanish teachers.

The teaching of Spanish in all of Brazil’s secondary schools – where there is a current enrolment of 9.1 million students – will also create a huge market for Spanish-language books.

While imports of books in the Spanish language have already increased significantly in recent years, they will now undergo a veritable boom, and this should lead to growing trade relations with Argentina and Spain, which are major publishing centres, said Fernández Marrero.

For the moment, the Education Ministry is concentrating on defining, by this September, the mechanisms to make text books and other teaching materials available to teachers and students. It will then move on to providing or expanding access to Spanish-language literature for students of the language.