Education: a matter of state, not government.

Former President Lula's speech in Brasília, during a PT (Workers' Party) seminar on Education, was that of a statesman. He highlighted the political awareness acquired by young people as the most important fact of the present day in Brazil. Greater access to the dream of technical and university education has made young people dream, and above all, understand that they can do more and that they have a place in the world.

This social category—those aged 16 to 26—having access to education, is the engine that, in Lula's words, drives a nation towards the future. Young people, especially those from low-income backgrounds, are aware that knowledge is fundamental to their survival in the job market.

Lula rightly stated that the Brazilian elite should be ashamed of how they have treated education in Brazil. In 1538, Santo Domingo already had its first university. Peru, in 1551. While Argentina, in 1918, underwent its first university reform, Brazil inaugurated its first university two years later. This highlights the disregard of the ruling elite for the Brazilian people, since their children went to study abroad.

It took a lathe operator, without a university education, becoming president for a project of inclusion and expansion of education in Brazil to exist. This was achieved through the creation of federal universities and technical schools, as well as the expansion of places in existing ones, the creation of thousands of university campuses far from the so-called major centers, and, of course, student financing through programs such as FIES and ProUni. Today, it is no coincidence that Lula is internationally recognized with several honorary doctorate degrees.

The social ascension of young people has set them on an unstoppable march in defense of professional and university training in a context of the dismantling of Brazilian education, promoted by the illegitimate government. Dramatic budget cuts, on the order of 30% for next year, affect all educational levels.

A suicidal attitude, according to Lula. To view education as an expense, as a deficit, and not as an investment is to go against the grain of all developed capitalist countries.

The priority for the illegitimate government is to favor rent-seeking at the expense of production, which undermines the economy. Investors arrive not to make new investments, but to buy existing, amortized ones at cheap prices. These are not investments in new industrial plants, but in already developed, profitable bases, ready to generate wealth through production, consumption, tax collection, and investment. The money that arrives is solely for extracting value from the country to remit profits and dividends abroad, to the detriment of workers.

Meanwhile, the conditions for national capital development are blocked: there are no interest rates or loans favorable to production, employment, tax collection, and investment.

Lula identifies the construction of a productive chain necessary for a continental country like Brazil, possessing strategic resources that are extracted and exported at low costs without added value, as a major challenge. To overcome this challenge, it is necessary to raise the average scientific and technological knowledge level of the population, along with better income distribution. And education must be the lever for national development.

The former president's position is the opposite of the terrible cuts in investments in education, health, and infrastructure imposed by the freeze on public spending by the illegitimate neoliberal government of Temer. The immediate end to this freeze is the only way, also pointed out by Lula, capable of resuming any kind of development in Brazil.