I thought these children were poor?

I think a few people looking at the videos of the school are a little surprised. After all, Brazil is a 3rd world country, surely the music classes should be in a falling apart tin shed on a dirt floor, with raggedly dressed kids? That is the kind of imagery we often associate with poor people from 3rd world countries.

I knew it wouldn’t be like that here, but I don’t think I’ve explained the situation to people – so here is some background…This school is like an oasis in a sea of chaos. Yes, inside the school it’s clean, bright and safe. Yes, the children wear school uniforms. Yes, it may look like a flash private school, but it is not.

Estrela do Mar is a free school that offers hope to those it takes in. It is very progressive by international standards (vegetarian meals, wheatgrass drinks, humanity programs, professional role model programs, English and soon Mandarin classes, and many more).

But it is not open to everyone. Parents have to earn less than AUD300 per month before their kids will even be considered for admission. This figure is based on the supposed government mandated minimum wage. All the school is saying is that if you earn more than that you are too wealthy for your kids to come here. However for many of the parents, that number is an illusion. According to David Leiner:

many, if not most, earn significantly less than minimum wage. There are unemployed who receive welfare benefits and nothing else, and unemployed with welfare benefits who have irregular work, such as working as a maid on demand, collecting recyclable materials, cutting neighbors hair, etc. It is very hard for us to get exact with this as each family usually has a dynamic situation, with long term, formal employment quite unusual, spousal relationships changing frequently etc

Because the parents earn so little, sometimes many adults will live under one roof to help with rent payments. From a positive point of view, this may well create extended families and provide an alternative to the ‘nuclear family’ existence that is so common in the West. But there is a darker side to it as well. Many of the parents are unemployed and illiterate. Some of them sit around all day in their houses watching television (yes that is one vital thing they just have to have) getting drunk. Some of the homes are very transient, with unrelated adults coming and going. There are no internal doors in the houses; these are not the safest places for young children.

In many cases, the biggest battle of breaking the cycle here is the parents. Teaching the kids is relatively easy – kids always want to learn. Undoing the bizarre attitudes of the parents is hard hard work. It is one of the constant battles that David and Claudia face.

The parents are the broken ones, broken by a system of corruption, broken by the unrealised hope offered by religious institutions, broken by being illiterate and feeling disempowered. They have little opportunities, little education, low self-esteem, they are people trying to survive. And in their cycle of survival and desperation they will sometimes do awful things to themselves and their children. Gut wrenchingly awful things. I have a page of stories I’ve jotted down while I’ve been here about some of these things. But some of these are so horrific, I cannot work out yet how to publish them in any positive way.

Here are examples of some of the more unusual attitudes of the parents:

Children mysteriously turn up announcing “I don’t have to do my homework – I know my rights”… I wonder where that comes from.

To instill a sense of responsibility, each day 3 kids on a roster help the maintenance staff sweep the floors of the lunch area. The kids do it with pride and with smiles on their faces. It takes them about 4 minutes during their lunch break. The reaction of some of the parents – They accused the school of child labour. Some of them genuinely believe that this school profits from their children and that the school is flush with money.

There is one parent who has announced to the school that she will sue them. She just doesn’t know what for yet and is looking for any reason. Surprisingly suing is quite common here. David and Claudia are in constant fear of this kind of thing.

A four year old, in her first days at the school, refusing to hold hands with any other child with skin darker than her own. How many four year olds do you know, with pre-programmed racism? There’s only one place that attitude was learned.

Racism does actually exist here and on a very unusual level. Brazilians are a kaleidoscope of skin colours, a huge range of coppery browns, some fairly white and some jet black. But racism here is not polarised into black and white. Within a class or a community judgements will be made based on micro-shades of skin colour. It seems perplexing and quite unnecessary, but then so is racism on any level. David doesn’t like to sweep things under the table either. If he sees or hears of a child being picked on because of skin colour, he will not only deal with the offenders, but compassionately he will also invite the parents of the child that was picked on into his office to explain what happened, to apologise, to explain that the school does not tolerate racism and they will do everything they can  to stop it.

The wonderfully clean and bright environment of the school, for many is a great contrast to their life outside. The intention is that when you walk through these  doors you are in an environment that is safe and caring, where no adult will harm you emotionally or physically. Their uniforms are provided free. But even then, there is still the mother who sold her kids uniforms to support her crack habit.

Some of these kids turn up to school with black eyes (I’ve seen it myself). They don’t manage to get one with all their playing and tumbling around at school, but somehow manage to get one at home. Go figure. There are kids who show violent behaviour, but the teachers are too scared to call the parents because they know the parent will beat their child. But, there are some wonderful examples too, of parents who love their kids, are proud of them and take a vested interest in their children’s education. According to David, unfortunately these are in the minority. It’s worth bearing in mind, many of the parents were not necessarily in stable loving relationships and decided one day it would be nice to have a child.

What strikes me as amazing, and I believe this is universal of kids all over the world, is how they can sometimes rise above such adverse conditions, not poverty – but brutality and abuse. Those endless smiling faces in the videos, you would think this is the happiest place on earth. But I go pale thinking about what some of them go through. The other day I yelled at a kid in one of my classes because he was constantly disrupting it and preventing me from teaching the others. But I immediately regretted it. I have no idea what may have happened to that child in his home situation. For sure, order and control are vital in the classroom, but the last thing these kids need is another adult showing any kind of aggression towards them. It is the skill of a great teacher to be able to assess and connect with these challenging children while still dealing with the rest of the class – a skill that I don’t have yet.

What’s the environment like outside the school? A week before I arrived, a man was shot dead about 200m from the school, supposedly a domestic incident. How do you explain this to the children? Last week as we left the school, we saw that a crowd of around 300 had gathered around a house less than 1km from the school; there were police and ambulances. A father had murdered his two children. According to David, if the crowd stayed much longer, someone would soon be selling hotdogs. Sadly David doesn’t even bat an eyelid at these atrocities, after six years here in Maceio, this is just normal for him.