NN39, October 2007
Best Practice in Education and Training: Hype or Hope?
Best Practice In Big Countries
By Claudio de Moura Castro, Faculdade Pitagoras, Brazil
KeywordsBest practice, Brazil, Education
Summary
?Best practice? is a useful and crisp enough concept. But it remains alien to the education community of a big country such as Brazil, for the simple reason that Brazil pays little attention to international agencies.
----
Since I have worked in three international agencies for several years, the expression ?best practice? has become so familiar to my eyes and ears that it has always been taken for granted. Without thinking twice, we all considered the term `best practice` to be a seasoned international traveller, as we ourselves tended to be. But is it?
From the best of my knowledge, it migrates smoothly to those smaller nations that are much more dependent on loans and international assistance. But as I think harder, it does not migrate so successfully to bigger countries, such as Brazil, which are less dependent on foreign loans and aid. In fact, even relatively large loans - from the perspective of the Banks - add only a tiny fraction to education budgets. Loans of hundreds of millions of dollars only put a small drop in their multi-billion dollar budgets.
These modest sums, from the point of view of the recipient countries, do not give much clout to the technical advice from international agencies. And the fact is, money is what makes the countries pay attention to the preaching of foreign experts. The small contributions of loans to the overall spending of the countries frequently accompany deaf ears to the papers and wisdom served by well-meaning international officers. Even less attention is paid to United Nations agencies which bring what amounts to petty cash to big countries.
Therefore, ?best practices? are parts of packages that tend to remain unopened in the Ministries of Education. It is not so much that the term sounds funny or wrong. However, it fails to be appreciated on its own merits, together with all the other jargon that comes in the package, such as ?rates of return? or ?internal / external efficiency?. They are all seen as World Bank lingo, something that is both ?neo-liberal? and irrelevant.
As far as I can tell, ?best practice? is not an idea rejected on its own merits, because nobody is much aware of it. It is just part of a strange dialect that no one sees the need to understand. Reading regularly our local newspaper clippings on education, I do not remember having ever come across this expression. Journalists are not aware of it and ministry officials have not included it in their baroque-bureaucratic jargon.
People like me - who are active in discussing education policy ? often refer to the idea. In fact, the idea is unavoidable. If one sees something wrong, the immediate reaction is to propose a better practice. But we avoid using the term, because it rings no bells to the educated public opinion or administrators.
To sum up, ?best practice? is a useful and crisp enough concept. But it remains alien to the education community of a big country such as Brazil, for the simple reason that Brazil pays little attention to international agencies ? which is not necessarily a virtue, by any means!
Back to full contents of NORRAG NEWS 39.
Download the full issue of NORRAG NEWS 39 in pdf.