To make a revolution in Brazil's education system, it is necessary to prepare the teacher to fulfill a new role. The role of the teacher is decisive so that through education a new type of man qualified for the world of work is created and conscious and well prepared to transform the world in which we live for his benefit.

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IN DEFENSE OF A REVOLUTION IN EDUCATION IN BRAZIL
Fernando Alcoforado *
Brazilian education is going through an unprecedented crisis. This crisis results, on the
one hand, from the lack of an efficient and effective education system and, on the other,
from the lack of governmental policies that contribute to overcoming the current
problems of education and to their adaptation to the ongoing technological changes that
impact on the world of work and society in general. The fact that Brazil's education
system is inefficient and ineffective prevents it from operating as a factor of economic
and social development and contributes to the social ascent of the lower classes of the
population. The lack of a new education policy adjusted to the current technological
changes prevents Brazil from increasing the productivity of its workers and jeopardizing
their economic and social development.
The inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the current education system are demonstrated
by the mediocre performance of Brazilian students in the PISA (International Student
Assessment Program) examinations that aim to measure the knowledge and ability in
reading, mathematics and science of 15-year-old students both from industrialized
OECD member countries and from partner countries, and by the unsatisfactory
performance of Brazilian universities in the ranking of universities in the world
measured by The Times Higher Education that evaluates the performance of university
students and academic production in the areas of engineering and technology, arts and
humanities, life sciences, health, physics and social sciences, and also considers
research, transfer of knowledge and international perspective, as well as the teaching
environment.
The catastrophic situation in which the education system in Brazil is, demonstrated by
PISA and THE, and the ongoing technological changes that impact on the world of
work and society in general are demanding a real revolution in education in Brazil. The
great challenge of education in Brazil is represented not only by the deficiency of the
current system but, above all, by the rapid changes that are occurring in the world of
work thanks to the technological advance, mainly due to the impact of artificial
intelligence, which is intelligence similar to the human displayed by mechanisms or
software. Experts believe that the intelligence of machines will match that of humans by
2050, thanks to a new era in their ability to learn. This means that we are creating
machines that can teach themselves and also communicate by simulating human speech.
There is every reason to believe that robots should be widely used in productive activity
in general, which makes it imperative to prepare human beings to deal with these
intelligent machines in the labor market. Considering that one of the objectives of a
country's education system is to plan the preparation and recycling of people for the
labor market, it is incumbent upon the planners of Brazil's education systems to identify
the role of human beings in the world of work in a future with intelligent machines to
carry out a wide-ranging revolution in teaching at all levels, including the qualification
of teachers and the structuring of teaching units to prepare their students for a world of
work where people will have to deal with intelligent machines. Educational units at all
levels of education must be deeply restructured to achieve these goals.
In order to implement a new education system geared to the preparation of human

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beings for the labor market, it is essential, therefore, to begin to identify the human
skills necessary for the work of the 21st century and to adjust the educational system in
Brazil that is obsolete to form citizens more capable to a reality different from the
industrial era that is coming to an end and still prevails at the moment.
The education system aims to prepare people, not only for the job market, but also for
life. Contemporary education needs to provide the conditions for students to acquire the
knowledge they need to think and build a better world. Students need to be made aware
of what is happening in the fields of economics, science and technology, the
environment and international relations, among others. There is enormous
misinformation that reaches the overwhelming majority of students in Brazil, causing
them to be unable to correctly interpret the reality in which they live, much less
transform it. The present educational system contributes enormously to the alienation of
human beings because education is not thought of as cultivation of the spirit as a
condition for the advancement of humanity. This is what should be the true meaning of
education.
In order to prepare the education system for life, the guidelines proposed by Edgar
Morin in his book The Seven Necessities for Education in the Future should be adopted,
which indicates the need for a transdisciplinary effort capable of rejoining the sciences
and humanities and breaking with the opposition between nature and culture which,
according to him, is a challenge for all those who are committed to rethinking the
course of educational institutions and do not want to succumb to the inertia of
fragmentation and excessive disciplinary characteristics of the contemporary era. Morin
defends the thesis that we need to re-learn to rejoin the part and the whole, the text and
the context, the global and the planetary, and face the paradoxes that the technical and
economic development brought with it.
To make a revolution in Brazil's education system, it is necessary to prepare the teacher
to fulfill a new role. The role of the teacher is decisive so that through education a new
type of man qualified for the world of work is created and conscious and well prepared
to transform the world in which we live for his benefit. The role of the teacher should be
that of a manager of processes rich in meaningful learning and not that of simply
sending information in the classroom. The teacher should act as mediator of the
students' learning process using simple technologies, such as those on the cell phone, a
camera to illustrate, a free program to gather the images and to count on them
interesting stories and the students being authors, protagonists of their process of
learning. We should be inspired by the educational policies practiced in Japan, Finland,
South Korea and Switzerland, which are the most advanced countries in education in
the world, in order to restructure Brazil's education system from pre-school to higher
education.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 78, holder of the CONFEA / CREA System Medal of Merit, member of the Bahia
Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the
University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business
planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of 14 books addressing issues
such as Globalization and Development, Brazilian Economy, Global Warming and Climate Change, The
Factors that Condition Economic and Social Development, Energy in the world and The Great Scientific,
Economic, and Social Revolutions that Changed the World.