Portugal teria a ganhar em tornar-se uma província do Brasil
Colunista do Financial Times lança uma proposta provocatória para resolver a crise de dívida: que Portugal seja anexado pelo Brasil.
http://economico.sapo.pt/noticias/ft...il_114376.html
A Nation of Dropouts Shakes Europe
Portugal is the poorest country in Western Europe. It is also the least educated, and that has emerged as a painful liability in its gathering economic crisis.
The state of Portuguese education says a lot about why a rescue is likely to be needed, and why one would be costly and difficult. Put simply, Portugal must generate enough long-term economic growth to pay off its large debts. An unskilled work force makes that hard.
Cheap rote labor that once sustained Portugal's textile industry has vanished to Asia. The former Eastern Bloc countries that joined the European Union en masse in 2004 offer lower wages and workers with more schooling. They have sucked skilled jobs away.
Just 28% of the Portuguese population between 25 and 64 has completed high school. The figure is 85% in Germany, 91% in the Czech Republic and 89% in the U.S.
"I don't see how it is going to grow without educating its work force," says Pedro Carneiro, an economist at University College London who left Portugal to do his postgraduate studies in the U.S.
Education long was an afterthought here.
"The southern countries like Portugal and Spain and the south of France and Italy, we have always had some problems related with education," says António Nóvoa, a historian who is rector of the University of Lisbon.
"That's been like that since the 16th century."
The repressive dictatorship that ruled Portugal from 1926 to 1974 had the idea
"that people should not have ambition to be something different than what they were," Mr. Nóvoa says. The result was widespread illiteracy and little formal schooling; just three years were compulsory. Huge leaps have been made since the 1970s, he says, but "it is not easy to change a history of five centuries."
Portugal has just begun phasing in 12 years of required schooling; now, Portuguese can leave school after ninth grade. Many do. The government says it is racing ahead with reforms. Mr. Sócrates points to an initiative that gives students laptops and to a far-reaching project to rebuild dilapidated schoolhouses. Results last year show students improving on standardized tests.
But it is a long road.
"We have accumulated years and years of ignorant people," says Belmiro de Azevedo, a billionaire industrialist.
He described the system as calcified. The central administration wields tight control. Curricula are simultaneously undemanding and rigid. Dropout rates are high. Schools struggle to accommodate an influx of immigrants from Portugal's former colonies in Africa, such as Angola and Guinea-Bissau.
A push to evaluate teachers triggered searing strikes and demonstrations in 2008, souring relations between powerful teachers' unions and the government. The political life of education ministers is measured in months: since the dictatorship ended in 1974, there have been 27.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...989644198.html