Illegal education

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, September 4th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Paul Butler.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: homeschooling in Brazil. It’s popular, but there’s one problem: the government says it’s illegal.

Parents there choose homeschooling for many of the same reasons that American parents do. Until recently, the political environment was broadly more favorable towards homeschooling. But today, parents are up against a hostile government that is actively looking to prosecute them.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: How do they cope?

WORLD senior writer Emma Freire visited a homeschool mom in Brazil. And is here with her story. And just a quick note, we have agreed not to use her real name for her protection.

AUDIO: [MARIA READING ALOUD IN PORTUGUESE]

EMMA FREIRE: It’s time for a homeschool history lesson. Homeschool mom Maria reads aloud to three of her children as they snuggle together on the dark gray sofa in the living room of their apartment. A few Paw Patrol trucks and other toys are scattered around.

AUDIO: [PIANO PLAYING]

That’s her 9 year old son practicing piano on a keyboard in the living room.

Maria and her husband live in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte. They have five children, with a sixth due next year.

MARIA: How old are you? 10, yes…

The children have never attended a brick and mortar school. Maria and her husband learned about homeschooling when they were expecting their oldest and loved the idea, particularly because they’re Christians.

MARIA: We believe that education is a lot of, a lot more than math, Portuguese. It’s more of like building a human being, right?

But the Brazilian government doesn’t think parents like Maria should be teaching history—or anything else—at home.

A 2018 ruling by the Brazilian Supreme Court left homeschooling parents in a legal limbo.

JULIO POHL: It said that the practice of homeschooling is not against the constitution of Brazil, but that it required a federal law to be allowed.

That’s Julio Pohl. He’s a legal counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom International focused on Latin America and he helps homeschool families in Brazil.

POHL: And we need to remember one thing here, when we're talking about Brazil, is that Brazil is signatory of major international human rights treaties that allow homeschooling because they protect the rights of parents to direct the upbringing of their children.

Pohl believes those treaties apply in the absence of specific legislation. But Bazil’s left-wing presidential administration thinks otherwise. A bill to legalize homeschooling is currently stuck in the Brazilian senate. In the meantime, Pohl says the government has ordered local prosecutors to go after homeschooling parents.

POHL: The Vice President said it in some public remarks maybe four months ago, six months ago, at the beginning of the year, he said something like, homeschooling is a racist creation of Americans that didn't want to have schools with black and white. That's what he said, which is completely wrong, first of all, and second of all, he says that because he tries to demonize homeschooling

Maria has noticed the shift since the left-wing government took power last year.

MARIA: Years ago, I would say, I would explain. I would talk about homeschooling. But nowadays, to protect our family, we don't say it.

She knows two families who were forced to stop homeschooling because they were prosecuted. They were threatened with the loss of their children if they didn’t enroll them in a brick and mortar school.

To avoid questions, Maria tries to create the impression that her children attend school.

MARIA: I live in a building. I don't let my kids go down and play in the morning. And at afternoon, I choose a period of the day that they can go so my neighbors doesn't know that they aren't at school.

But it’s hard to fly under the radar because her big family stands out in a city where most people only have one or two children.

MARIA: So since we have a lot of kids, one of the first questions that people do is: where do they study? I think they think, how do you pay the school if you have so many kids? It's sad, but we trained our boys to answer that they go to a school in their neighborhood and that they… I don't say the truth, because we are afraid.

Pohl estimates there may be 100,000 homeschooled children in Brazil and that number is going up.

POHL: Homeschooling is growing because the situation of education in Brazil in general is lacking, not only because of it is not good in academic respects, but also because schools are, I would say, laboratories of indoctrination in Brazil. And that's that's the case. There's a lot of gender ideology being pushed, a lot of attacks on religious freedom of parents in the sense that children are being taught against the convictions of their parents.

Maria knows about a Christian private school in her city that she likes. But she can’t afford the tuition.

MARIA: A big reality here is that private schools are very expensive. So is another big deal to it. So, even when you have, when you find a good one, can you pay it for it?

Maria’s family participates in a homeschool co-op every Tuesday. It’s good for the children, but perhaps even better for the parents.

MARIA: It's nice to have a place where you already have families that every week you are there. It makes us comfortable, I think, with the situation. So we not, we don't feel so alone.

Pohl says Brazilian homeschoolers are probably stuck waiting for a solution until after the next elections scheduled for 2026. That could bring senators who will pass the bill legalizing homeschooling or perhaps a new president who is less hostile. In the meantime, families like Maria’s will have to make do as best they can.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Freire in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

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