O artigo termina anunciando a necessidade imperiosa de Portugal ter estudos superiores de Sociologia da Educação numa Faculdade de Sociologia.
Em 1978, fazendo jus ao desejo latente, em Coimbra, nascia o CES do professor Boaventura, recém saído de Barcouço e da sua experiência social de avant-garde.
Havia já um ninho cheinho destes ovos de serpente que originaram depois, nos anos futuros, a cultura réptil na Educação e o seu nome era ISCTE, criado no tempo de Marcello Caetano para entreter o que Vasco Pulido Valente mencionava em Fevereiro de 1974 na revista Cinéfilo:
Foi esta gente saída destes viveiros que criou a verdadeira "geração mais bem preparada de sempre" em Portugal.
A revista Newsweek desta semana tem uma capa sobre os campeões do ensino público no mundo e parece-me que não há por lá sociologia da educação...
Como isso?! Mandem já o professor Boaventura ensinar os ignorantes!
Jinjing Liu, a 15-year-old ninth-grader at Meilong
Intermediate in central Shanghai—and part of the best education system
in the world’s most populous country—is ticking off her normal class
schedule: “Physics, chemistry, math, Chinese, English, Chinese
literature, geography…the usual stuff,” she says in impeccable English.
That’s not Jinjing’s school day schedule; that’s her workload each and every Sunday.
The Lord may have rested on the seventh day, but Jinjing studies, from 8
a.m. until 5 p.m. She relates this over lunch on a Saturday afternoon,
“the only day,” she acknowledges, that she has “any free time to relax.”
And lest you think she is some whiz-bang academic geek on the fast
track to Tsinghua, China’s M.I.T., think again. Ask who else in her high
school has that Sunday routine and she says, “Pretty much everyone.”
Over
the past several years, the Shanghai public school system has drawn
global envy—and stirred controversy—by acing an international test given
every few years by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) that seeks to measure the quality of
school systems globally. In 2009 (the first time the city participated
in the test) and again in 2012, Shanghai finished first out of 66
locations surveyed in the so-called PISA exams (Program for
International Student Assessment) in the three key disciplines: reading,
science and mathematics. At the same time, the test showed the United
States dropping lower in the global standings in all three disciplines,
most precipitously in math.
Predictably, at a time of increasing public concern
about public education, the results prompted consternation in the U.S.,
where, according to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, only 25
percent of high school graduates are academically prepared to succeed in
college. In the minds of many, China’s economic rise is clearly linked
to its academic success, so it is perhaps not surprising that the OECD
ranking elicited another reaction among America’s chattering class:
defensiveness, and some denial. The digital magazine Slate headlined an
article “Why We Need to Stop Letting China Cheat on International
Education Rankings.” (Now that’ll make your kids smarter!) And a columnist for London’s Guardian purported
to reveal the deep, dark secret that somehow eludes the OECD
test-givers in a piece titled “Here’s the Truth About Shanghai Schools:
They’re Terrible.”