B44. Anchieta Field Trip

Anchieta County lies between the coast and the mountains; the south-flowing Rio Enchante divides it east and west. Fishermen pull into the river to dock their single-horsepower two-person boats. A fish market with four or five shops is nearby.

After a mile or so of Anchieta's narrow urban orientation, the county seat's main street at each end becomes a paved road, one headed to Rio, the other to the state capital. The other roads running through the foothills and the mountains are dirt roads, but until the steepest, well maintained. Car traffic is light, trucks occasional. Power lines criss-cross the county and many houses show a TV antenna aimed at Rede Globo's booster station, bringing in the nation's major network.

Houses are almost entirely of tile construction on a concrete slab, cream or tan in color, with an ever-blackening red tile roof. Some farm places have outbuildings but not most. Schools and chapels pop up every couple of miles. The foothills are increasingly stripped of forest and bush, exposing pockmarks, old anthills. Cattle, particularly Brahmin, appear to overgraze the hillsides. Coconuts, bamboo, sugar cane grow in the draws; papaya, bananas and coffee on higher ground. A few chickens are seen; dogs more common than cats; horses wait patiently for their rider.

The ground is badly eroded where roads have been cut through, exposing an earth bright orange, red or light tan. Granite outcroppings are common. As the mountains approach, the roads narrow and roughen, but the houses get a bit fancier. One never seems far from a place to buy popsicles or beer. Roadside advertising is infrequent. Main highway signs caution drivers to protect life.

At the public schools (all but one in the county cover grades 1-4), the visible signs of curriculum and pedagogy are few. There are teachers and workbooks, desks or chairs and a blackboard with something on it. There are no textbooks, bulletin boards, artwork, children's exhibits. One room has two religious pictures, framed, probably placed there when the building was built. Almost the only wall charts are teacher-made, the most common are phonetics with drawings ("ta" followed by an armadillo logo). One teacher has cut out magazine pictures, making several decorative posters. One room has a flag, two in fact, made of paper, the national flag. A framed pioneer Duque do Caxius appears in one room, unframed in another.

Some rooms have been cleaned today, by the teacher with student help. (The ten room town school had two women custodians.) Other rooms appear to have gone many days without. Orange peelings on the floor and trash out the window are not uncommon. The only fresh poster (appearing in three schools out of eight) is a cartoon character embracing a school building, admonishing readers to "Love your school," meaning in part not to vandalize it. (The town school has been badly vandalized over time and not repaired.)

Whatever the problems of these schools may be, the personnel resources of them seem a major strength. Each teacher has routines for the kids which indicate a considerable involvement in arithmetic and language (long division and syllabication and phonics most evident). Workbooks are standard fare, in most schools each student's bookbag carries several. Group work is evident in one sixth grade class, though in another students seem unfamiliar with the routine of a group assignment just made.

The teachers are not puzzled by what they are supposed to do or what the children are supposed to do. They are frustrated by the obstacles, mostly the lack of materials. It is a good relationship, teachers with students, and within those two groups as well, both evident at each site. Contentious the teachers are not--ready they are to tell about the school's activity and need is.

Socialization in the classroom appears quite healthy (in contrast to upper grades in U.S. schools where teacher and students often have a contentious relationship). Here (excluding grades 5-8), the teacher and students have a common goal, and show respect for each other. The children work soon after being told, and fix durable attention to the task. Some peer assistance is apparent, but is not exploited by any teacher observed.

Taking tests is being routinized. On one blackboard, a second grade "Teste" consists of four items in cursive. These children have to get 80% right on an end-of-year test to pass to the next grade. In this county, the educational coordinator gets teachers together to make up the test, then sells it to the pupils for 15c each to make money for office operations. The tests are mimeographed, the cover sporting a cartoon character, hand colored neatly. This office also sells maps of the county, ours showing the correct location of some but not all schools.

The signs of school poverty are many: Barren classroom walls; the smallest, cheapest tables for pupil writing; teachers providing their own chalk; no water in the toilets except that brought by bucket (but always two closets); no stove to cook the government supplied hot lunch (but pupils happily gathering wood for campfire cooking); desks over 50 years old of a style of 100 years old; no bulbs in the light sockets in a school with light sockets (most are not electrified); six new brooms this year for almost 50 schools; no paint since construction; children unable to buy the required emblematic T-shirt; kids walking miles to school, almost none with bicycles; the shared eraser, dime-sized; some using pencils an inch long; teachers charged for government supplied gradebooks, which are sometimes sold to buy fuel for the cookstove (where there is one).

The signs of spirit are many: Children happy, teaches involved, all animated; blackboard announcement of today's date; children working quickly, comfortably when the teacher tells them to; children interested in each other, sometimes helping each other with lessons; eighth grade boys clustered about the gate so that the older girls have to squeeze through to leave; well-groomed teachers walking a mile to catch the bus home; children organizing group games, singing.

There are apparently political signs too: More resources at some schools, partly (apparently) based on which teachers are closer to the county mayor, or whether or not the local landowner's children are in school; poorest school is the Black school, where only 6 of 20 attend today (The Black school down the road isn't open at all because they have no teacher.), the children there don't turn around and look at the three visitors for 10 minutes, the teacher said they thought we might be the police; when asked who was the smartest, who helps the teacher most, the spontaneous answer is, "Everybody's the same," school shirt ideology is to show them all equal--the Minister of Education corrects school officials saying children must be admitted whether or not they have the shirt--so again we have classes, "shirted" or not; the federal shipment of food to the state for distribution to county school arrived just prior to an especially hot summer, was badly stored, spoiled; some relate timing to the fact the opposition party is in power here.

Signs of isolation: Although rural schools are within 20 miles of the county seat there is little communication. Some teachers say in the last two years they have not seen the coordinator in the field; schools have no phones; even advertisers don't look their way; still the older kids know who Michael Jackson is.

Signs of ethnicity: Most schools display great gradation in complexion and hair color, from fair to very dark, but most kids are rich brown, with bright eyes a standard; one imagines one sees Nordic, Mediterranean, Portuguese, African children; they show little ethnic cliquishness, some; some aggression is apparent in one school, among boys, with youngest Blacks appearing to take more than their share of hazing, the Nordics the most aggressive; bigger girls of both ends of the color continuum control them with sophisticated moves, small threats of exclusion.

Now I am sitting in a school across the street from the beach in Uda, a small fishing village. This is a second grade room this afternoon, in the morning it is for some other grade. The regular teacher is away and a qualified substitute ( in some places a member of the family shows up to teach) has been called in. This one is a young woman of perhaps 22. She says she likes to teach, but seldom gets the opportunity.

Just now a child is reciting, reading from a workbook. (It seems that visitors get to see children performing standard roles more than teachers.) The workbook asks for the recognition of syllables. Her reading is lively, steady. Now a boy reads. He is not so able. The class chatters a bit; the teacher shushes them (in Portuguese (?) it's more like "ssssst"). Several children are working at their notebooks. (Behind me through an open window several older children check out the two of us visitors.) The reader murmurs on, finishes, relieved. Now a third reader. The children have all been over this same page. (These are the highest quality workbooks we have seen.)

On the walls, bare on other schools, are posters, handmade in the coordinator's office, including vowels; something about the Duque de Caxias, Patrono de Excercito Brasileiro, etc.; several from magazine pictures. On the blackboard are chalked exercises, as at other schools, in the teacher's longhand. Here we have 20 kids, half boys, half girls, most of them chocolate brown, with all colors of hair from blonde to jet-black, kinky to straight. Their eyes are large and bright. They are curious. We are an interruption, not unwelcome. They impress us with their penmanship and language. A new exercise goes onto the blackboard:

---greja ---relha --- vo ---viao etc.

Now near the mountains, I am at the county's only public secondary school, grades 5-8. There are four female and one male teacher, all in their 20s and 30s. They finish their noodle soup and the cook collects bowls and spoons, from them and the hundred or so kids as well. The kids are clean, healthy-looking, well-clothed in jeans and T-shirts. There are no Blacks here.

Today the seventh graders have math, geography, Portuguese, science, and phys ed. Religion is taught once a week. We go to science class. A pert young miss reads a group report on blood circulation, drawn from books brought by the teacher. Only one boy seems to listen seriously, but the others remain subdued. They find the visitors only briefly worth scrutiny, but there's a sense of "things are different today." Two other reports follow, one on respiration. The group doing "human cells" hasn't finished theirs yet.

School is out for now for some, but the seventh grade goes to P.E. First a run around the soccer field, then contests and games, including a version of "drop the handkerchief." Boys tend to choose boys, girls girls. The teacher keeps the youngsters from helping run things. The youngsters enjoy themselves in spite of her seriousness--perhaps that is more for us. When asked why they like school they say, "It's good to be with the teachers and the other kids." Two boys, bookbags swinging, head for home, a 2-hour walk to the "furthest mountain," that one just now hiding the sun.

Bob Stake, First draft, June, 1984