Global Issues
BRAZIL: Art is the Best Education
A broad range of projects in Brazil are using ballet and folk dances, classical and popular music, theatre, circus arts, capoeira - an Afro-Brazilian combination of dance and martial arts - fashion, visual arts and the audiovisual media to reach disadvantaged and at-risk children.
This huge laboratory, spread across mainly non-governmental organisations scattered throughout this country of 190 million, is developing new techniques and concepts to boost social inclusion and education.
The education provided by the school system, based only on reason and structured to serve the needs of an industrial society, no longer responds to present-day challenges, especially the concerns and interests of young people, according to the School of Dance and Social Integration for Children and Adolescents (EDISCA).
That is why EDISCA offers 'inter-dimensional education,' striking a balance between thinking, feeling, desire and the search for transcendence - the correlates of the Greek principles logos, pathos, eros and mythus.
Art - in this case, dance - occupies a central place in this educational strategy, because 'it connects with the different dimensions of a holistic view of human beings,' says Madeline Fontoura, an educational psychologist who has worked at EDISCA since 2001.
This non-governmental organisation produced a book in 2004, titled 'EDISCA - A arte na construçao do humano' (roughly EDISCA: The Role of Art in the Construction of Human Persons), a systematic account of the experience acquired in its first 13 years of existence. The book identifies 'the crisis of the age' with the rule of reason, which it describes as 'analytical-instrumental' because it fragments knowledge and is an instrument of power and progress.
The 'pedagogia do desejo' (pedagogy of desire) applied by the Axé Project, and the 'pedagogia da roda,' or Learning Circle, the approach used at the Popular Centre for Culture and Development (CPCD), are educational methods that emphasise aesthetics, ethics and learning for pleasure.
'Art is education' in and by itself, and fulfils this role much better when it is not used merely as a means to academic ends, according to both these philosophies.
Creativity
'Art challenges people to look for different answers to a single problem, by stimulating different points of view and ways of thinking, as opposed to formal education, which imposes 'convergence towards a single answer,' says Idelli Nichele, regional coordinator of Projeto Gurí in Jundiaí, close to the southern city of Sao Paulo.
Proposing alternative solutions in school usually means being wrong, and is seen as deviating from the single right answer, a process that stifles creativity. 'Uniform thought is not thought' nor reflection, but merely the reproduction of ideas, adds this educator, a 'disenchanted' former head teacher at conventional schools.
Music is a proven instrument for fostering logical reasoning, but it also stimulates its practitioners to look for variations on melodies and harmonies. 'Jazz is fantastic' in this respect, said Nichele, who has also taught university-level art education courses.
Creativity is the outcome - a gift which is increasingly important in the economy and in people's lives, but which formal education tends to quench by focusing on the mass production of technicians and professionals who are processed like parts in an industrial assembly line.
Art has the additional virtue of overcoming the growing boredom with standard public education, seen especially among teenagers.
A recent study by the Rio de Janeiro-based Getulio Vargas Foundation found that 40 percent of Brazilian 15-to-17-year-olds who dropped out of school in 2006 did so because of lack of interest, and that the highest drop-out rates for this reason were among teenagers in the richer areas, such as Sao Paulo.
The need to work, on the other hand, which had been presumed to be the main cause of students leaving school early, was only responsible for 27 percent of drop-outs.
This is in sharp contrast to the sense of commitment among the children and teenagers taking part in the projects that IPS visited for this series of reports on 'Art is the Best Education' - a commitment which in many cases trumps hunger, lengthy commutes or long journeys on foot. 'Here we learn more than at school, and it's more fun,' was their most frequent remark.
'The fascination of art awakens children's interest and sharpens their senses, which makes it easier to learn everything else,' according to EDISCA's Fontoura. Public schools, on the other hand, undermine their self-esteem and with it, their capacity for learning, and the children respond by rejecting them, she said.
Pitágoras, a boy in the Araçuaí choir who at the age of 11 had never seen a piano, but learned to play the instrument, used to have great difficulty with maths. After his teacher showed him the relationships between music and mathematics, 'I took off,' he said.
Education for life, respect for others, acceptance of differences, peaceful coexistence, patience and knowledge of one's own potential are some of the added benefits of collective art activities like music and dance, according to interviews with students and instructors.
Art as education
Most of these initiatives started out with the goals of social inclusion or recuperation, or to prevent violence and marginalisation, although some of them, like Axé and the CPCD, originally had the explicit purpose of reforming public education through innovation.
Several of the projects are part of the Latin American Network of Art for Social Transformation and the AVINA network Art for Social Transformation.
They all consider formal education to be essential, although they criticise the low quality of public education in this country. That is why they insist that their participants attend school regularly or resume their formal education, as in the case of the Axé Project which takes in at-risk children who have dropped out of the school system.
Acting as a complement to state schools, these projects provide extracurricular activities and, sometimes, homework support sessions. Through their efforts, the children in effect receive full-time education - a long-term aspiration of education authorities and educationists which has not yet been implemented other than experimentally, mainly due to financial constraints. (In Brazil, children attend school in either the morning or afternoon shift).
Public policies
Recognising the role of these initiatives and including them in the education budget and the school system would be a way of incorporating them into public policy, which is the ambition of several of the NGOs. The Axé Project, for instance, aims to get its methods adopted by the state, and when it succeeds the organisation will dissolve itself.
The Ministry of Culture has instituted a way of supporting civil society initiatives: organisations selected through a tendering process are recognised as 'cultural reference points,' and given small amounts of funding for three years to strengthen their activities and connect them in a national network.
But the Axé Project and EDISCA - beacons among NGOs working in education and the arts - and many others besides, are currently facing a serious financial crisis because of the termination of substantial funding partnerships and the appreciation of the Brazilian currency against the dollar, which reduces the value of foreign donations.
The Axé Project launched a funding campaign aimed at Brazilian individuals and companies, including small and medium companies. 'Society should recognise the benefits of Axé and support it,' argues Serguem Jessui da Silva, who is managing the campaign.
At an annual cost of nearly 4.5 million reals (2.3 million dollars), the Axé Project is expensive to run. Its main budget items are transportation and meals for children and teenagers in various outlying neighbourhoods of Salvador, the capital of the northern state of Bahia, and the cost of maintaining the quality of its artistic activities, according to Ená Benevides, the project's coordinator.
Resources from the public education budget could strengthen the organisations, but pose the risk of 'loss of independence.' And without guaranteed continuity of income, they could be liable to abrupt new funding shortfalls, said Jessui da Silva. 'For the past two years there have been no state contributions' to Axé, he said.
Dora Andrade, EDISCA's founder and director, also said it was 'dangerous to depend on the government for our economic survival.' She would prefer to seek new sources of funding to overcome the current financial difficulties. Individual donations and charging fees for the knowledge EDISCA has accumulated, through its 'Partilha' (Sharing) project, are options that have already begun to be implemented.
The EDISCA ballet corps, whose performances have been widely acclaimed, could also become professional in order to bring in income, secure wages for the dancers and achieve 'visibility to help attract sponsors' for the project, Andrade said.
This would not rule out accepting government support when offered, but to depend entirely on the state would be a 'kamikaze' strategy, she said. The NGOs have earned their legitimacy because of the benefits they provide; now they need financial viability in order to keep going, said Andrade.
In Pernambuco, a state in Brazil's impoverished northeast, the Children of São Caetano Symphony Band Foundation, one of the successful music projects portrayed in a film, wants to become a School of Music for professional and technical training. The Pernambuco state government promised to do this three years ago, but the process has ground to a halt.
At the Education Ministry, progress has been made towards incorporating the contributions of 'community knowledge' and the complementary educational activities of the NGOs, according to Beatriz Azeredo, head of the Centre for Public Policy Studies (NEPP) and former social area director for the state-owned Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES).
'We are not starting from scratch,' but to transform civil society actions into public policy requires 'both sides' to move in each other's direction, and convergence to occur between the different 'logic' of social organisations and government bodies, whose 'demands are sometimes in conflict,' she said.
NGOs want funding to pursue excellence through music or dance, and they have to limit the number of their beneficiaries to a few hundred, she said. Public policies, on the other hand, have to be universal, and are applied on an infinitely larger scale, almost always at the expense of quality, which is the case with the state Projeto Guri that covers some 40,000 children.
Nonetheless, there is 'a favourable outlook,' she said. The third sector (civil society) has matured a great deal and is under pressure due to the economic crisis, but lengthy negotiations with the Education Ministry and state and municipal governments will be required, in Azeredo's view.
'A new culture of public policy development' should emerge as a result, and a clearer definition of the 'place of social organisations in these policies,' which cannot simply be the sale of services, she concluded. <table width='100%' border='0' align='center' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='5' style='border:solid 1px #cccccc'> <tr> <td width='3%'><img src=http://www.ipsnoticias.net/_adv/becas_avina.jpg width='77' height='83'></td> <td><font size='1' face='Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif'>' This article forms part of the 'Art Is the Best Education' series of reports. The project that gave rise to this effort was the winner of the AVINA Investigative Journalism scholarship. The logos must be published with the reports. The AVINA Foundation and Casa Daros, its local partner in the Art and Society category, are not responsible for the ideas, opinions or other aspects of the content. '.</font></td> <td width='150'><img src=http://www.ipsnoticias.net/_adv/Daros_Logo.jpg width='150' height='45'></td> </tr> </table>
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service