Pelo fim das décadas perdidas : educação e desenvolvimento sustentado no Brasil

This paper aims present, for the Brazilian reality, a diagnosis of the relationships among education and inequality that it justifies the need to define a politics of accelerated expansion of education to assure the bases of a sustainable process of development. The analysis of the labor market, allows us to identify the educational heterogeneity among workers as the main determinant of the general level of the wage inequality observed in Brazil. The international comparison allows us to recognize that this educational heterogeneity respond, in a significant way, for the excess of inequality in the country in relation to the industrialized world. The process of economic development occurred in Brazil in the last decades, however, have reinforced the consequences of the educational heterogeneity in the country. The accelerated technological expansion in Brazil occurred during the period of our "economic miracle", it was systematically associated to a slow process of educational expansion. The technological progress clearly won the race against the educational system. The comparison of the Brazilian reality with the international experience confirms the weak performance of our educational system in the last decades. Brazil presents a delay, in terms of the education, of about one decade in relation to a typical country with pattern of similar development to ours. Thus, the best recommendation to social politics is: quality teaching for everybody, for evident citizenship reasons and social justice, but, besides, as an absolutely necessary condition for the sustained socioeconomic development of Brazil.