Two pieces of news from Brazil called our attention this week.
First, Brazil is cutting back R$ 25.4 billion of its public budget due to the financial crisis. R$ 1.2 billion just from the Ministry of Education (10.6% of its non-fixed expenses) and 6.6% of the non-fixed budget from the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Also, a geography textbook was found to have wildly incorrect maps (the map of South America showed Paraguay twice, misplaced Uruguay, and had Ecuador’s borders touching Brazilian borders). Professors from the public-network of schools that receive textbooks from the National Program of Textbooks often complain about mistakes in the textbooks, they mentioned for local newspapers that mistakes are common, but the errors in the map were the worst they had seen. Mistakes are more generally grammar mistakes and the educational secretariat of states keeps a website alerting schools of errors later found in the textbooks they distribute.
During the period of 1998-2006, the Brazilian government bought books from 110 publishers, spending R$ 4.5 billion, but, due to the oligopoly in the Brazilian book market, only 6 publishing houses – Abril, Santillana, FTD, Saraiva, IBEP, Ediouro e Editora Brasil – received R$ 3.893,3 million, corresponding to 87%. Could OER represent an alternative for high cost of books and materials quality? The collaborative nature of open educational resources brings the inteligence of the crowd to develop and make materials more accurate. Could OER represent a better alternative for regional necessities of localized educational materials? Countries such as Brazil that have uniformed curriculums could take advantage of the flexibility of OER to provide complementary and localized materials to address regional differences.
