As serpentes nos ovos do ensino público

Portugal, 1976, segundo O Jornal de 10 de Setembro desse ano, foi descoberto o filão que iria mudar o mundo da Educação em Portugal.

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.”