Education and inequality

To understand this duality in Brazil, we must go back to the colonial period, because it is from there that the variables that generate inequalities begin, including the exploitation of slave labor, first indigenous, then African, not to mention the free workers who yielded exorbitant profits for a small layer of colonial society at the time, a trend that persists to this day, configured in the country's dominant elite.

The wealthiest hold approximately 28% of the income, while this segment of the current Brazilian population represents no more than 1%. The work carried out in the past by this poorer segment of the population generated wealth and increased the income of this minority, but other factors were also important in increasing this wealth, such as tax evasion, and even the creation of laws that, while not benefiting, protected those who held this income. The municipal councils of the time already legislated in this sense to protect the income and earnings of the sugar elite.

Jesuit colleges were attended by the children of colonists, with a minimal number of indigenous people and orphans among their students. They employed the European standard of education with a humanistic approach that included grammar, science studies, and social behavior classes, among others.

However, the education of the majority of indigenous people was carried out in missions, with the aim of catechizing them, that is, making them docile so that the colonial elite could use them as workers who were not likely to question the reasons for their exploitation, since many did not immediately accept their enslavement. This education was far inferior to that of schools for the children of colonists, where control was sought through the study of various native languages, the creation of dictionaries and grammars in the languages ​​of these peoples. Education in this sense was more concerned with knowing the "enemy," controlling them through educational practices, and facilitating the gathering of various different peoples with the same objective of the sugar elites for the smooth running of production, therefore for the realization of profits and the increase of their income.

Here we have the first instance of educational inequality in Brazil, with the separation of those who accessed education for the maintenance of the culture, way of life, and wealth of the Brazilian colonial elite. This separation left the exploited without access to universal knowledge capable of producing a significant change in the lives of our indigenous people, the primary objective of education and its pedagogical processes.

Later, after the country's independence, a constitution was promulgated guaranteeing the rights of the elites to their assets acquired during the colonial period, but the indigenous people continued to have no rights whatsoever. Freed slaves born in Brazil were considered citizens, but with restrictive rights, including the right to basic education. José Bonifácio even tried to include the indigenous people through education; the project he developed was approved, but excluded from the 1824 constitution. As can be seen, the issue of inequality continued in independent Brazil, denying citizenship to some and restricting rights to others.