A Survey of Elementary and Secondary Education in Latin America

Latin-American education today bears more resemblance to its ineffective past than to the great and good plans which its educators have regularly got incorporated into law. For two generations all the southern republics have passed constitutional provisions guaranteeing free and compulsory education. Haiti has carried such a provision in its legal code since 1871, yet today 92 per cent of its people are illiterate. The percentage figure ranges somewhat lower for the other countries, but the basic situation remains the same. As H. W. Spiegel reported in The Brazilian Economy: “ At present no more than one-third of Brazil's child population attends school. Schools, including the elementary, are overcrowded. Teachers are scarce. Education opportunities for higher training are poor and expensive. During 1940 to 1944, seventyeight per cent of the immigrants were literate; in 1940 only thirty-two per cent of the native Brazilians were literate.”