Education: 27% of teachers do not declare race in the census – 08/28/2023 – Education

Even with a resolution by the National Council of Education that obliges Brazilian educators to declare race in the School Census of Basic Education, 27% of teachers failed to fill in the information in the last edition of the survey, in 2022.

Statistics, according to managers, teacher trainers and other specialists, hinders the drawing of an accurate racial profile of the class, hindering the formulation of public policies. It also impacts the teaching of black art and culture in schools, provided for by law.

The percentage of those who did not answer about their race was never below 20% and had a peak of non-completion in 2016, with 29.4%, according to a survey carried out by the NGO Todos Pela Educação. Since then, the number had stabilized at 25%, but now it has grown again.

Tânia Mara, secretary of education for Santa Barbara d’Oeste (SP), says that racial issues are still taboo for most teachers.

“Whenever this issue appears in training courses and in conversations we carry out, we hear from educators that they never thought about it”, he says.

She explains how the lack of this data harms her work as a public manager. “Without this information, how am I going to charge the city hall to carry out a public tender that has quotas?”

Inep (National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira), the authority that carried out the research, admitted, in a note, that the fact that educators do not declare their race “makes racial understanding difficult in Brazilian schools”. And he pointed out that there is a resolution of the National Council of Education that determines that such information is mandatory.

The agency also stated that it carries out awareness campaigns with educators to remember the importance of racial data. Since 2005, the survey has allowed students and teachers to say which race they identify with.

It was historian Eliezer Pacheco who coordinated the inclusion of ethnic-racial questions in the census. “We did this to guarantee that we had data to subsidize public policies. Before, the racial profile of the Brazilian professors was done in the eyemeter”, he says.

Carla Pinheiro is an educator and studies the ethnic-racial belonging of teachers in her doctorate. A black woman, Pinheiro says that it took her a while to realize her condition. “I only became aware of this issue during a graduate course I took on ethnic-racial relations. I was already 28 years old.”

She claims that education professionals often lack information on the subject. This prevents survey data from being collected correctly. “Many of my colleagues don’t know that they can declare themselves black, for example.”

Both Pinheiro and Tânia Maria claim that this lack of racial identity has an impact on student education. “How can someone who is not aware of their own race talk about this subject with the students?”, asks Carla.

Maria Solange Ribeiro Correia, pedagogical coordinator of a children’s education center in the capital of São Paulo, who declares herself to be black, argues that teachers’ awareness of their own racial identity is a fundamental factor in welcoming black children in schools.

“It’s no use for us to take care that the didactic materials represent black children, to be careful, if we don’t observe the issue of the educator’s preparation to deal with the subject.”

She claims that she has been through situations that show racial prejudice within the school. “I’ve heard from some people that I didn’t look like the coordinator, people are not used to seeing black people in positions of power”, says Solange.

Alessandra Tavares, pedagogical coordinator at Comunidade Educativa Cedac, explains how the racial issue is perceived by educators: “They say they don’t see any difference, that they are all the same, and that masks a process of invisibility for black people.”

When he directed Inep in 2015, professor at UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais) Francisco Soares organized a campaign to make school communities aware of the importance of declaring race.

“It was a request that came from the Ministry for the Promotion of Racial Equality, but the focus was on students and not on teachers”, he says. Soares claims that, at that time, the issue of racial declaration by educators “was not on the agenda”.

In the 2010 Census of the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), 0.35% of people failed to answer the question about race.

For Jeferson Mariano, a socioeconomic analyst at the IBGE, the high rate of non-response may indicate that the professional fears declaring his color because he believes that this could harm his career or an eventual promotion. He, who is also a university professor, tells of his own experience.

“I went through all the stages of a selection process for a private college. I didn’t need a photo. Until the day of the face-to-face interview arrived and the coordinator saw that I was black. I ended up without a vacancy, even though I had a higher degree than the selected candidate”, says Mariano.

Pacheco, former president of Inep, reinforces this position. “It is possible that many teachers do not answer this question because of fear. There are still many places where the black educator is hostile, unfortunately, there are still parents who do not admit that their children are educated by black people.”