Young Brazilians who have gone to the United States as students have been surprised at the fact that the most important leaders of a typical Anglo-American community are its businessmen, with university professors and high school teachers as secondary or even socially insignificant elements of the same community. The surprise comes from the fact that Brazil has been used to a classification of social values in which university and high school professors, and even the so-called "First Letters"(Primeiras Letras) teachers, are considered of higher value in an urban community than great or prosperous or energetic business leaders, merchants, or industrialists. This is certainly the traditional Brazilian table of social values for urban communities, though, in recent years, intellectual or academic prestige has suffered a depression, and the prestige of businessmen, industrialists, and merchants has increased in a somewhat Anglo-American, or Anglo-Saxon, way.

Why that situation in Brazil? Until some twenty or thirty years ago, it was so definite that one had the impression that the only Portuguese-speaking republic of American was a sort of American East India, with a caste of Brahmins who, reverently addressed as Reverend Masters (Padres Mestres), Doctors, and Professors, were of the highest social value in a typical community. Why this situation, and the disregard or disdain for business as a career for young men of distinguished families? Why this Brazilian cult of the professor, the doctor, the learned man?

A number of explanations may be given for such a situation. Even the intimate contact of Portugal with East India and China may be given as a remote cause. Another explanation may be the influence of Sephardic Jews in Portuguese culture and society: an influence that contributed to the idealisation of the learned man, the intellectual master, the doctor, the professor. Brazil received from Portugal a number of semi-European, semi-Oriental values, among them great importance given by Eastern peoples to their learned men or masters of arts and professors.

At the end of the eighteenth century and during the first half of the nineteenth century, an academic career or profession became, in Brazil the means for young Mestizos, or the sons of modest urban families, to rise socially so as to compete with the sons of the landed aristocracy in intellectual and political activities. As bachelors of arts, lawyers, medical doctors, young men of nonaristocratic origin had the opportunity of becoming a new aristocracy: that of cap and gown. And in this new aristocracy, it was natural for professors in law and medical schools to become very important academic dukes or princes: they were not only graduates of universities but professors or masters. No important lawyer was complete in his prestige if he was not a professor in a law school; no medical doctor was considered a really learned man in medicine if he was not a professor in a medical school. It should be mentioned that the Brazilian George Washington - the greatest leader of the Independence movement in Brazil - José Bonifacio - was himself a scholar, a savant, and, in his own way, a teacher.

Such was the idealisation of the teaching profession - though most of the lawyers and medical doctors who taught in universities delivered there only a few brilliant or eloquent and, in some cases, even bombastic, lectures, without giving themselves intensely or systematically to pedagogical activities - that the man who for half a century was the Emperor of Brazil - Dom Pedro II - is said to have dreamed all his life of being a college professor or a schoolmaster. He would gladly have exchanged his crown and his royal mantle - he was a Bourbon, a Hapsburg, and a Bragança - for a cap and gown. A learned man himself - a humanist who knew some Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and astronomy, besides ancient history and French literature - he found a special delight in attending final examinations in schools, in being present at academic celebrations, in playing the role of a professor or a school teacher as much as his duties of Constitutional Emperor allowed him. By doing so he contributed notably to the increase of the prestige of professors and teachers in Brazil. He felt happy when the members of his cabinet or the political leaders in the National Parliament were professors or teachers like João Alfredo or Zacarias de Goes. He even was particularly tolerant of Republicans who, like Benjamin Constant Botelho de Magalhães - an officer in the Brazilian Army - taught mathematics to young men in the Military School of Rio and were noted for their talent as teachers.

Because the teaching profession has this background in Brazil, it is easy to understand why even to-day businessmen are so eager for academic honours. Roberto Simonsen, who died a few years ago as leader of the Brazilian Federation of Industries, took a special delight in lecturing to young men as a professor of economics, and was a very happy man when his name was chosen for one of the chairs in the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Some of the most important political leaders of Republican Brazil have been men noted as university professors or teachers in secondary schools; a large number of members of the National Congress also. Only recently, have begun to be proud of the fact that they are practical and have nothing to do with academic institutions or activities. This is an Americanism or an Anglo-Saxonism in Brazilian life. Perhaps it had to develop under the pressure of industrialisation.

With the large increase of primary schools in Brazil during the last thirty or forty years, primary teachers no longer have the same prestige they had some years ago. Not even secondary and university teachers now belong to a closed caste, as they did until the beginning of this century, though their social position remains one of considerable intellectual and social prestige, and many still delight in giving as their titles that of "Professor" or "Doctor".

As to the economic situation of university and secondary teachers, one should remember that they have not been occupied full-time, but have been free to engage in other activities such as the practice of medicine, law, engineering, journalism, and so on. Most of the lawyers or medical doctors or engineers who are professors have found a definite economic advantage in this fact. Social prestige has meant, to a large number of them, economic advantage. It should also be pointed out that most of them have been men, though the number of women teachers in secondary, normal, and even universities is increasing.

It is also significant that normal schools, in present-day Brazil, are schools whose students are, in a large majority, girls and not young men. Most of the primary school teachers in Brazil are, at present, women, not men: a tendency that has increased during the last half-century. Until the end of the nineteenth century, women were rare in this as well as in other branches of the teaching profession. Now it is rare to find a man as a regular teacher in a primary school in the most advanced or progressive regions of Brazil. Men school teachers are to be found in a considerable number only in primary schools of backward areas; or as inspectors of primary schools - very seldom as teachers - in semi-progressive or progressive areas.

Teachers in primary schools have to complete a five-year course in their elementary school, four years in their secondary school and three years in a training college. So they usually enter teaching at the age of 18 or 19.

It was only with the foundation of Schools or Faculties of Philosophy in São Paulo and Rio that the training of secondary school teachers became systematic. Until then (1934), this preparation was largely an individual adventure: there was practically no opportunity for the candidate for this type of teaching position to prepare himself methodically or systematically. Secondary teachers were chosen from amongst lawyers, medical doctors, priests, engineers, with little or no specific training for teaching. With such lack of systematic training it is easy to associate lack pedagogical quality in most of the secondary teaching in Brazil during the Empire (1822-89) and the so-called "First Republic"(1889-1930), though one should not forget that among this old type of high school teachers in Brazil there were a considerable number of men notable not only for their scholarship but for their pedagogical virtues. Some of them were authors of didactic books that remain good examples of such virtues and expressions of real scholarship - for example, textbooks for the study of Latin, Portuguese, history, geography, literature, mathematics.

But it is also true that a larger number of secondary teachers at that time were extremely rhetorical in their teaching. They did nothing but deliver speeches to adolescents, who were influenced in a bad way by this cult of oratory or eloquence, even as students of chemistry and physics or natural history. Museums or laboratories were rare and deficient.

More modern methods are, however, being developed. The School or Faculty of Philosophy of São Paulo, as well as the Schools or Faculties of Philosophy, Economics, Law, and Sciences in the University of Rio de Janeiro (Federal District), when this university was founded, organised and led by men like Professor Anisio Teixeira, Professor Miguel Osorio de Almeida, Alfonso Pena, Junior, and the late Alfranio Peixoto, did a splendid and courageous work of reorganisation of teaching methods for secondary and university studies in Brazil. Not only did they attract to their staffs Brazilians with a systematic university training in Europe or the United States, but they had the courage to invite, as founders of fundamental chairs, foreign scholars and scientists of high standing in their own countries. These scholars and scientists were the instruments in a real revolution in methodology, and their stay in Brazil was highly beneficial to an honest beginning of a genuine university system in our country. It was also a great thing in Brazil to see the University of Rio de Janeiro, with Professor Teixeira as its organiser, with a free hand to do what he pleased, go after the best Brazilian talent, the best Brazilian scientists and scholars, and insistently ask them to stay for some time as teachers or founders of chairs in that university.

Unfortunately this good example given by the organisers of the University of São Paulo and the University of Rio de Janeiro (Federal District), has not been followed by other universities or faculties or schools of philosophy in Brazil. Some of them have organised themselves with a few competent Brazilian professors and a large number of immature or even incompetent ones. Politics has been allowed to interfere with appointments that should be made on a non-political basis. Organisers of new schools of philosophy in Brazil - they are now so numerous that some critics consider them a plague - have lacked the courage to invite, for certain fundamental chairs, competent European and American professors, whose young Brazilian assistants would become their successors and the regular occupants of chairs established in this way. As a consequence of this, there are to-day in Brazil, schools and faculties of philosophy and universities, which some critics consider nothing but caricatures. The consequences of such a policy of pedagogical nationalism will be felt in the lowering of the standards of university culture in Brazil, established by Professor Teixeira in Rio, and by Governor Sales de Oliveira, with the technical assistance of Professor Fernando de Azenedo, in São Paulo, as well as in the lowering of standards in secondary teaching in Brazilian schools. It is a pity, because if the example of the Universities of Rio de Janeiro (Federal District) and São Paulo had been followed, university and secondary teaching in Brazil would to-day be in full development, with the chairs of professors and high teachers occupied, as a rule and not merely as an exception, by really well-prepared men or women. As conditions have developed, there is a need in present-day Brazil for a reaction against the bad "nationalism" - if "nationalism" is the proper word to designate this phenomenon - of Brazilians who feel that they have no need for European or United States technical help in the preparation of professors or teachers: a need distinctly felt in connection with some of the modern sciences and of philosophy itself, as taught in secondary schools (colegios) and universities.

Another interesting aspect of the status of teachers in Brazil is the economic one: the salary of university professors, secondary school and primary teachers. In all federal schools of university standing a professor's salary is always 8,400 Cruzeiros a month. He is allowed to teach in two institutions, on correlated subjects. He is also allowed to be a professor and at the same time to engage in research (on a subject related with his chair) in some research institution. This is a wise law, for a previous decree enforced as a law by the National Government in 1937 - when Brazil became a "strong state", to remain as such until 1945 - prohibiting professors from having more than one chair or engaging in research activities for such institutions as the Biological Institute of Manguinhos, was far from being beneficial to Brazilian culture.

As to the salaries of state or official secondary teachers in Brazil, there is no national uniformity in regard to them. Is some areas, like the State of São Paulo or the Federal District, a secondary professor is paid nearly as much as a university professor: 8,000 Cruzeiros a month. In small states, a secondary teacher is badly paid: there are cases of a teacher being paid only 900 Cruzeiros a month. This applies to secondary schools maintained by the different states of the Brazilian Union, a federal union similar to that of the United States of America.

In private secondary schools, the teacher's situation is sometimes a critical one, for in some states or regions he is poorly paid, though free to teach in two, three, and more schools. He is paid for lectures or "aulas": and this payment varies from twelve to forty Cruzeiros for each aula, according to what the students of each particular school pay annually for their tuition. A secondary teacher has, in some areas, to give as many as tem aulas or lectures every day in order to earn a salary of 8,000 Cruzeiros a month. According to some critics of this system this is an anti-pedagogical arrangement. The poor teacher has to go from one school to another, and to add considerable physical mobility to his intellectual effort of giving or repeating eight or tem aulas a day. This type of secondary teacher is vividly described by Professor Aderbal Jurema, of the University of Recife, as a "taxi-teacher".

There are two vacations for teachers as well as for students - university, secondary, and primary - in Brazil from the beginning or the middle of December until the end of February or the end of March, and in the middle of the year, for nearly one month. Primary and secondary teachers have the right to be socially protected by the Instituto de Assisténcia e Previdéncia dos Comerciários. A special institute or department for social assistance or security of teachers is expected to be organized soon in Brazil. When invalided or when he reaches his age-limit, the secondary or primary teacher in Brazil, who is a member of that institute (Comerciários), has a right to receive two-thirds of 2,000 Cruzeiros: the 2,000 Cruzeiros he has to pay gradually to the same institute. In case of death, his widow will receive 1,200 Cruzeiros. As to the university professor in a federal university, he is entitled to the same assistance as other federal employees in his category. When he reaches the age limit (70) or becomes an invalid by professional accident, if he has thirty years of activity as a professor, he receives his full salary. If he has taught for less than thirty years, he receives a monthly sum proportional to his period of activity.

These notes, though incomplete, give a general idea of the status or the teacher in Brazil: the university professor, the secondary teacher, the primary teacher. I owe to Professor Aderbal Jurema, of the University of Recife and for some time director of a secondary school in the city of Recife, some valuable information concerning the economic conditions under which professors and teachers work in modern Brazil. He dealt with some aspects of the subject in an illuminating lecture, "O Ensino Secundário no Brasil", delivered at the Faculty of Philosophy of Recife and published in Nordeste (Recife), January 1948. Other aspects of the subject have been dealt with, in recent publications, by other Brazilian specialists in pedagogical subjects, and any foreign student of the same subjects would find a wealth of valuable information in the recent Encéclopidia da Legislação do Ensino (Rio de Janeiro, 1952), edited by Professor Vandick Londres da Nobrega. Other interesting publications in connection with the subject of this paper are: O Ensino Superior e Médio no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1951), an official publication of the Ministry of Education and Health; Oportunidades de Preparação no Ensino Superior (Rio de Janeiro, 1950), also a publication of the same Ministry. One should add the São Paulo periodical called Atualidades Pedagogicas

Fonte: FREYRE, Gilberto. Brazil. London: Year Book of Education, 1953. p. 534-540.