ABSTRACT
Brazilian education has still to reach everyone in Brazil. A Ministry of Education was only founded in 1930, and prior to that there were no teacher-training colleges. But educational forces only really got to work with the re-establishment of democracy after the Vargas dictatorship. Primary education was declared free yet at the same time was made the responsibility of poverty-stricken provinces who could not possibly implement the mandate. In 1966 the University of Brasil, until recently the sole centre of higher education, was disbanded into the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Education tends to be encyclopaedic and theoretical. In the sciences the pupil receives little experimental grounding, and emerges even from a university course with little feeling for the physical aspects of things.
