200th Birthday of Charlotte Bronte

               Last Thursday, besides to be national holiday in Brazil, a tribute to Tiradentes, in this day in 1792, he was executed. It is also when was born the British writer Charlotte Bronte. This year she would be celebrating her 200th brithday. This post is a summary of four articles. The first was published at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Bront%C3%AB. The second with the incomplete title above, was published at http://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/charlotte-brontes-200th-birthday-marked-in-britain. The third was published at http://www.likesbooks.com/cgi-bin/bookReview.pl?BookReviewId=5517. The fourth was published at http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/janeeyre/themes.html

              Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) was an English novelist, the oldest of the three Bronte sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels have become classics of English literature. Charlotte was born in Thornton in Yorkshire, the third of the six children of Maria and Patrick, an Irish Anglican clergyman. In 1821, her mother died of cancer, leaving five daughters and a son to be taken care of by her oldest sister Elizabeth. In 1825, the two oldest sisters died of tuberculosis. After that, her father removed her from school and she acted as guardian of her younger sisters. She and her surviving siblings: Branwell, Emily and Anne, created their own fictional worlds, and began chronicling the lives and struggles of the inhabitants of their imaginary kingdoms. Charlotte wrote about a imagined country named, Angria. Between 1831 and 1832 Charlotte continued her education at Roe Head in Mirfield. She returned to Roe Head as a teacher from 1835 to 1838. In 1839 she took up the first of many positions as governess to families in Yorkshire. In 1842 Charlotte and Emily travelled to Brussels to enrol at the boarding school run by Constantin Heger and his wife Claire Zoe. In return for board and tuition Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. In October 1842 they returned to England when their aunt ,who had look after the children after their mother's death, died. Charlotte returned alone to Brussels, but a year later returned to Haworth. Charlotte first manuscript, "The Professor", did not secure a publisher, although she was heartened by an encouraging response from her publisher. Charlotte then sent a second manuscript in 1847. Six weeks later Jane Eyre: An Autobiography was published. It tells the story of a governess, Jane, who after difficulties in her early life, falls in love with her employer. They marry, but only after the insane first wife, of whom Jane initially has no knowledge, dies in a dramatic house fire. The book's style was innovative, combining Naturalism with Gothic drama, and broke new ground in being written from an intensely evoked first-person female perspective. Jane Eyre had immediate success and received favourable reviews. In January of 1854, Charlotte married Arthur Nicholls, who had long been in love with her. She became pregnant soon after her wedding, but her health declined and she died with her unborn child, on March 1855, aged 38. The Professor, the first novel Charlotte had written was published posthumously in 1857.

               The 200th birthday of Charlotte Bronte, whose intense and passionate vision of rural life on "Jane Eire" has haunted generations of readers, was being marked in Britain on Thursday (April 21). Fans are hosting a birthday party in the house in northern England where Charlotte and her sisters Emily and Anne grew up and wrote their books. The birthday highlights the enduring global popularity of the Bronte sisters, whose works are seen as among the most important ever written by female authors. A ballet version of "Jane Eire" is opening next month, while the National Portrait Gallery is hosting an exhibition in her honour. The Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, a remote village on the edge of moors in Yorkshire, draws tens of thousands of visitors from around the world each year, while the sisters' books are staples of British bookshops and school curriculums. Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte were a clergyman's daughters who wrote for pleasure and dreamt of becoming published authors but feared they would not be taken seriously because they were women. They therefore adopted the pseudonyms of Currer, Elis and Acton when they sent their books to publishers in the 1840s. The biographer of Charlotte, Claire Harman told the BBC this month that "she was someone who both longed to be 'forever known', but clung to anonymity in order to achieve it, a woman much more concerned about truthfulness than personal fame and someone who felt compelled to put into words her own terrble sufferings... as being the only way to deal with them."

               Jane Eyre is not a pure romance novel. It is a complex work combining elements of the coming-of-age story, the gothic novel, and more. Despite its complexity, though, the heart and soul of Jane Eyre is the passionate love between Jane and her employer, Edward and it is their love story that is the most memorable element of the novel. Jane Eyre is an orphan of no wealth or social standing. When she loses her parents, she is taken in by her relarives, the Reeds, who treat her with contempt and even cruelty. When she is old enough to go to school, Jane goes to Lowood, where the living conditions are horrible. The food is foul, the headmarter is cruel and sanitation is so bad that an epidemic causes several deaths among the pupils. Jane survives, but loses her best friend Helen. This episode was based on Charlotte's experiences at the Clergy Daughters School, and Helen is based on her sister Maria, who died there. When conditions at Lowood improve, Jane stays on as a teacher until she is eighteen, and then accepts a position as the governess at the Edward Rocherster's house. Jane and Edward slowly get to know each other, and she falls in love with him. Jane is certain that Edward will marry the wealthy and beautiful Blanche Ingraham, but to her surprise Edward asks her to marry him. Both Jane and Edward are such passionate characters, but Jane's passion is tempered with sense, while Edward is all sensibility. Despite her social powerlessness Jane is one of the strongest women characters in fiction and by sticking to her principles she is rewarded with true love. Jane Eyre has been in print since its publication in 1847 and has been filmed many times.

                  Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. Love versus autonomy. Over the course of the book, Jane must learn how to gain love without sacrifing and harming herself in the process. Her fear of losing her autonomy motivates her refusal of Edward's marriage proposal. Religion. Throughout the novel, Jane struggles to find the right balance between religion moral duty and earthly pleasure. She encounters three main religious figures: Mr. Brocklehurst, Helen and St. John Rivers. One illustrate the dangers and hypocrisies perceived in the 19th century Evangelical movement. Another is too passive for Jane to adopt as her own. The last uses the Christianity for ambition and self-importance. Social class. Jane Eyre is critical of Victorian England's strict social hierarchy. Charlotte's exploration of the complicated social position of governess is perhaps the novel's most important treatment of this theme. Jane is a figure of ambiguous class standing. Jane's education are those of an aristocrat, because Victorian governess, who tutored children in etiquette as well as academics, were expected to possess the "culture" of the aristocracy. Yet, as paid employees, they were treated as servants. Jane herself speak out against class prejudice at certain moments in the book. Gender relations. Jane struggles continually to achieve equality and to overcome oppression. In addition to class hierarchy, she must fight against patriarchal domination, against those who believe women to be inferior to men and try to treat them as such.

                    

Education Must be a Top Priority

             This post is a summary of four articles, The first with the imcomplete title above, was published at http://www.un.org/press/en/2013/sgsm14784.doc.htm. The second was published at https://blog.myworld2015.org/2013/04/10/the-world-has-voted-and-a-good-education-is-top-priority/. The third was published at https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/09/why-education-should-top-the-development-agenda/. The fourth was published at http://www.hewlett.org/programs/global-development-population/quality-education

           Following are UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's remarks, as prepared for delivery, at the World Economic Forum session in the Global Education Imperative in Davos, Switzerland. Education must be a top priority of the global political and development agendas, As the title of this session says, this is not an option, but an imperative. First, education empowers people and transforms lives. None of us here could ever imagine what our lives and those of our children would be wnthout education. Education gives people hope, confidence and dignity. It equips them with knowledge and skills to escape poverty. It saves lives and reduces the spread of preventable diseases. Second, education fosters economic growth. Every dollar spent in quality education generates strong positive returns for our global economy. With unemployment rising so dramatically, we need, more than ever, to invest in relevant education. Many jobseekers do not have the skills that new jobs need. We can not afford a "lost generation". Third, education is the foundation for a more peaceful and sustainable future. By influencing people's attitudes and behaviours, education is a key channel for better mutual understanding tolerance and respect for each other and our planet. The three priorities of Global Education First are: First, to put every child in school. Second, to improve the quality of learning. Third, to foster global citizenship. 

             It is very encouraging news that people around the world have ranked "a good education" as their top choice in the  the UN’s My World poll on post-2015 priorities. It is too early to celebrate yet, however. There are recent signs that advocates have to work even harder to demonstrate that education is not only a fundamental goal in it is own right but also a crucial route to achieving other development goals. Better healthcare, improving governance and protecting the environment are certainly key issues. So are food security, gender equality, job creation, clean water and other priorities listed in the My World Poll. What they all have in common is that education makes them happen. Education should be front and centre in the post-2015 development framework not just becasue it is essential in itself and a human right but also because it empowers people to look after themselves, their families, their communities and their environment. Here are just a few examples of how education builds a foundation for reaching other development goals: * Education reduces poverty - If all children in low-income countries left school with basic reading skills, 170 million people could be lifted out of poverty. *Education promotes health - Women with secondary education are far more likely to be aware of measures for preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV, for example. the Millennium Development Goals have often been criticised for being designed with a "top-down" approach. The UN and high-level panel are doing their utmost to ensure that this time around, the process is more consultative. For this reason, it would be wrong to ignore the clear message coming through the My World Poll that a good education is the priority for the world after 2015.

               Few people would dispute the importance of education in our lives and those of our children. For good reason, in virtually all industrialized countries, education is compulsory for at least 10 years. In developing countries, however, 60 million children of school age are not at school. Yet instead of making a concerted global effort to bring all children to school, less than 4% of official development assistance funds basic education. Many thinks education is an aspect of social development that comes as a by-product of economic growth. This is wrong. Education is an absolutely necessary precondition of economic development. Bill Clinton's famous mantra, "It is the economy, stupid!!!", may be a useful slogan for a election campaign, but it is misleading in setting the priorities for sustainable development. It is not primarily the economy, nor money, that makes the world go round and determines progress in human well-being. Much more important than the content of people's wallets is the content in their heads. And what is in our heads is formed and enhanced by education which, in turn, helps fill the wallets, improves health, improves society and the quality of institutions, strengthens resilience at all levels and even makes people happier. I could discuss the ample scientific statistical analysis to prove the transformative role of education in development. But more convincing may be historical success stories. Finland was one of the poorest countries in Europe in the late 19th century. In 1869 it suffered great famine. Almost half of the children died in this poorly educated economy based on subsistence agriculture. After that tragedy, the government launched a radical education campaign: young people could marry only after they passed a literacy test. The number of elementary school teachers increased and by the beginning of the 20th century all young men and women in Finland had basic education. In 1906, Finland was the first country in Europe to grant women the right to vote and the subsequent economic development, based primarily on human capital, made Finland one of the world's leaders in technology, innovation and, as a result, competitiveness. Japan, Singapore, South Korea and finally China have similar stories but the timing is different. The Chinese experience shows that such success is not confined to tiny island or city states. The highly appreciation of education in Confucion tradition became transformative for the country. These countries built their stunning success stories primarily on improvements in human capital and without significant raw materials or international assistance. Economic growth followed the education expansion. There is little doubt about the cause and effect between education and human well-being. Neurological research shows that every learning experience builds new synapses making our brains physiologically different for the rest of our lives. Education expands the personal horizon and leads to more rational decisions. It clearly empowers people to access more information, contextualize it and make conclusions that are more conducive to personal and societal well-being. Well educated people are better at adopting good habits such as physical exercise, safe sex or quitting smoking. Education has many other effects on health, besides the commonly cited effects on income and employment. Now we need to educate the policy-makers to make it a higher priority in the development agenda.

                Education is essential to economic development. Citizens who can read, calculate, and think critically have better economic opportunities, higher agricultural productivity, and healthier children. Fundamental educational skills form the basis for future learning, but today too many students across the developing world are missing out. Many more children enroll in school today than a decade ago, an achievement brought about by policy changes at the international and national levels. But the promises of greater enrollments may not pay off. Just enrolling in and attending school does not guarantee mastery of even the most basic skills. The Hewlett Foundation working with Bill Gates Foundation, established an initiative to focus on ensuring that children learn. These foundations supports global advocacy efforts to improve children's learning. Its grantmaking activities are concentrated in three areas: 1) Measure learning - Grantees are working to increase awareness and accountability for student learning by improving public knowledge about learning outcomes. 2) Improve instruction - Grantees are working to support the development of effective instruction that improves student learning in schools at low cost. 3) Track resources - Grantees are working to advocate for sufficient resources to improve educational quality, and for those resources to be used efficiently. In the past decade. millions of poor families have sacrificed scarce family income to put their children in school in the hopes that education will put young students on a pathway out of poverty. However, many children are not learning the basis of literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking during their foundations years. Failures to address learning outcomes now could lead to a serious crisis several years from now as students exit the system without any learning gains. This learning gap threatens future development and will be an obstacle to productive lives for many

Sources of Growth in Latin America. What is Missing?

               This post is a summary of the book with the title above. The book was published in 2005 at https://publications.iadb.org/bitstream/handle/11319/279/Sources%20of%20Growth%20in%20Latin%20America.pdf?sequence=1

            During the last two decades, a great deal of research has been conducted to explain what lies behind the large differences in income per capita that we observe across countries. Long-run economic growth is central for understanding these differences. This book analyzes the source of growth in Latin America and focus on what is missing to sustain fast economic growth in the long run. Latin America ( LA ) countries are falling behind. The growth record of LA in the recent past has been poor. For decades the average income per capita has fallen relative to those of other countries, raising concerns about the capacity of the region to emulate more successful developing countries and lift its living standards closer to those of the developed world. What is failing? The first two chapters offer an overview of Latin America's growth performance. Chapter 1 shed light on the strengths and weaknesses of the growth process in LA by means of comparisons with other regions. Two clear messages arise from this chapter: first, LA's relative performance is poorer due to slower productivity growth; and second, this productivity growth is impeded by the quality of its institutions, The authors acknowledge that other factors, such as bad economic policies, have also played a role. During the past four decades, many LA countries experienced episodes of economic crisis, political instability, and social unrest. At the same time, they also implemented economic stabilization policies, political reorganization, and structural reform. A cursory review of indicators suggest a positive result from these efforts. Generally speaking, income per capita, health, and education indicators improved. The achievement are impressive in many respects, yet how satisfactory are they? To tackle this issue, we focus on the per capita economic growth rate and its contributing factors. We compared the experience of a "typical" country in LA  with that of benchmark countries, "typical" countries for the rest of the world and for subsets of developed countries and East Asian countries. The literature in economic growth generally highlights the role of human capital in long-term growth. As a factor of production, human capital has a direct role. It is important for innovation and for the absorption of foreign technology. Macro stability is a significant determinant  of schooling attainment and of the proportion of individuals that complete basic education. This conclusion is very important because it reveals that macroeconomic crises can have long-term negative effects through a vicious circle in which low growth and high macro volatility hamper schooling attainment, which in turn inhibits future growth. The process by which countries grow is a complex phenomenon. We hope that this material contributes to better understanding of the growth phenomenon in LA and to the transformation needed for success. Brazil experienced steady increases in output per worker from 1900 to 1980. As in the rest of LA, the 1980s were a decade of negative growth. What are the sources of Brazil's growth? The economy underwent significant changes during the 1990s, changes that transformed Brazil from inward-oriented, inflation-prone, and crisis-vulnerable to open; price-stable, and economically well managed. But Brazil's recent efforts to integrate itself into the world economy, establish macro stability and rely on private enterprise rather than state planning as the engine of economic growth have met limited success as measured by GDP growth. Whether these reforms will be sufficient to generate GDP growth rates in the longer term is still a open question. Our hypothesis is that such growth will require further improvements, which are now possible given Brazil's new, more stable environment. Indeed some of these improvements- higher capital productivity associated with longer-term investment and greater innovation; greater investment in skills and training; and the reform of institutions governing business activity- have only been imaginable under clearer ground rules engendered by macro stabilization. To achieve these improvements, further reforms are necessary in government, policies, and institutions. This second stage of reform consolidation, in contrast to the first stage, technical and political complexities are higher, depending on a larger and more diverse set of actors. This underlines the need for political consensus about the necessity and content of these reforms, which has clearly been lacking in Brazil. Thus, the analysis tries to answer the question: What parts of Brazilian state-level characteristics or policies coincided with income growth within the period studied? To frame the answer to this question, initial hypotheses about what determines or constrains household income growth in Brazil and its states are needed. Many such hypotheses exist. The following hypothese were selected, with notes amplifying the evidence that would support each. First are education constraints. Brazil's low level of workforce education is often cited by investing companies as an impediment to economic activity. So it is natural to posit this as an obstacle restraining growth. Second is political and policy uncertainty. Policy uncertainty has been cited by firms in many surveys as the number-one obstacle to investing in Brazil. It is sometimes difficult to ascertain exactly what comprises this uncertainty: exchange rates, economic ambiguity, and unpredictable legal ruling, among ither factors, may play a part. Third are infrastructure bottlenecks. Brazil's infrastructure is not worse than of its neighbors. There is, however, great variations among the states. Some findings suggest the importance of technological innovation: higher shares of IT in physical capital raised both productivity and its growth rate. Complementing this result, firms employing more skilled labor showed faster productivity growth. Given evidence from firms in other countries about the importance of international knowledge flows, this result raises concern that Brazil's integration into international production is not generating its full potential, perhaps because of a bias towards regional trade or owing to tech transfer impediments. The future importance of knowledge flows must been seen in the context of Brazil's present business environment. A heavy regulatory burden involving three levels of government, cascading taxes, controls on foreign licensing and tech transfer, and slow process of intellectual property protection are all candidates for public scrutiny and reform given the evidence presented here. The expansion of basic education is the single most powerful tool at the government's disposal for improving the distribution of gains from economic growth among the population. In this regard, the household data contain another important finding. The fundamental role the Real Plan played in improving of income growth among the poor by ending inflation. By continuing these two basic policies: expanding high-quality basic education and keeping inflation low, Brazil can avoid the growth inequality that has faced in the past. Attention to what the macro and micro data are telling us today suggest that trade, innovation, knowledge flows, and human capital will be the primary drivers  of Brazil's growth in the 21st century.

Everything is Connected

              This post is a summary of two articles. The first with the title above was published in January of 2013 at http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21569041-can-internet-activism-turn-real-political-movement-everything-connected.    The second was published in November of 2013 at http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/activistmedia/2013/11/from-optimism-to-delusion-cyber-technologies-democracy-and-surveillance/

               When dozens of countries refused to sign a new global treaty on internet governance in late 2012, a wide range of activists rejoiced. They saw the treaty, crafted under the auspices of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), as giving governments pernicious powers to censor the internet. For months groups with names like 'Fight for the Future' had campaigned against the treaty. The success at the ITU conference capped a big year for online activists. In January they helped defeat Hollywood-sponsored anti-piracy legislation. A month later, in Europe, they took on ACTA, an obscure treaty which, in seeking to enforce intellectual-property rights, paid little heed to free speech and privacy. In Brazil they got closer than many would have believed possible to securing a ground-breaking internet bill of rights, the "Marco Civil da Internet". In Pakistan they helped to delay, perhaps permanently, plans for a national firewall, and in the Philippines they campaigned against a cybercrime law that later the Supreme Court put on hold. The publication of Rachel Carson's jeremiad on the effects of pesticides in 1962 is widely seen as marking the appearance of modern environment awareness, and the politics that goes with it. 50 years on, might the world really be witnessing another such moment, and the creation of another such movement, this one built around the potential for ICT to foster free speech and innovation, and the threats that governments and companies pose it. Today every corner of the digital universe has its own interest group: social media users defend privacy, hackers reject far-reaching software patents, researchers push for open access to scientific online journals, defenders of transparency call on governments to open their data vaults. The internet is nothing if not an exercise in interconnection. Its politics thus seems to call out for a similar convergence, and connections between the disparate interest groups that make up the net movement are indeed getting stronger. Beyond specific links, they also share what Manuel Castells, a Spanish sociologist, calls the "culture of the internet", a contemporary equovalent of the 1960s counter-culture (in which much of the environmental movement grew up). Its members believe in tech progress, the free flow of information, virtual communities and intrepreneurialism. And as the environmental movement had radical organisations such as Earth First and Earth Liberation Army, its digital successor has also developed a direct-action arm. In early October Anonymous, a cyberactivist collective, took down a bunch websites in Sweden as a protest against efforts to extradite Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, from Britain. It is plausible that people who spend much of their lives online may come to feel strongly about the tech and ideological infrastructure that they depend on. According to a survey in 13 countries, on average 75% would give up alcohol, 27% sex and 22% daily showers to secure internet access for a year if forced to choose. In most of the world the green movements's victories came from applying pressure to established parties, and spurring the creation of new institutions, such as ministries of the environment. It is early days, but such institution building is hard to imagine for the net movement. Net politics is about freeing people to experiment rather than controlling their afluents. Although the state can guarantee freedoms, policy by policy it tends to do better, these days, on the shackling front. It is possible that the lasting influence of the net movement will be in providing new tools and tactics for people with political aims. All political protest and novelty now has a social media face, whether it be that of the tea party, the Occupy movement or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. All seek the fast-multiplying effect that the internet can add to activism and uprisings. Experiments in delegative democracy like Liquid Feedback created by German Pirate Party may rewire the way politics works from the inside, as well as speed things up. In German other parties are experimenting with such systems, something similar powers Italy's Five Star Movement. The true potential of internet politics is to reshape what people can do. It is not obvious that the sort of people who think of the world in terms of operating systems will prove to be the best at using that new potential, or find in it the power to protect the freedom or openness of all the infrastructure that they care about. But many of them are increasingly serious about trying.

                Thanks to the tremendous development of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the growing accessibility of the digital network, activists and citizens have found a new space for political expression: the internet. We should embrace ICTs where it helps us build a better future. But we should also be wary of its downsides, and not be fooled into false digital promises. From the Arab revolutions  to Indigenous-led campaigns and, more recently the spontaneous social movements that burst in Turkey and Brazil, over the last three years, the internet seems to have turned into a megaphone for political dissidents and human rights activists. The networked nature of web, in particular social media, and the explosion of users worldwide provide activists with unprecedented tools to communicate their ideas, mobilise supporters and take action outside established hierarchical power structures. Social media have revolutionised the way information is produced and shared: everyone share opinions, pictures and videos on issues that they care about or witness and upload them from their computers and smartphone on the internet. Institutions and individuals that represent public authority are now under constant citizen scrutiny. They  know that any mistake can spark online retaliation and take proportions that are hard to control. Many cyberactivists see in internet a new source of power that will eventually force the ruling elite around the world to become more transparent, accountable and favour human rights and democracy. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a tech fix to a complex problem and, the solution itself carries its own load of downsides. Indeed, while digital tech have participated to the success of social and revolutionary movements, they also enhance the effectiveness of state surveillance. Governments are tempted to use digital  networks to control populations by monitoring communications, blocking access of certain users or even tracking and imprisoning digital dissidents, e.g. in China and Iran. Recent revelations on the surveillance system set up by the NSA and its British counterpart: GCHQ have shown that this is not an exclusive feature of authoritarian regimes. Let is be clear on one thing: it is still preferable to be a political dissident in the US than it is to be in a country like China. But the surveillance of democratic governments is a clear violation of their own privacy rules and without public debate, as well as the pressure exerted against whistleblowers, activists and journalists who stand against it, is unsettling. We would be wrong to assume that digital tech have some kind of built-in determinism that will necessary result in a more transparent and democratic society. Such assumptions is inaccurate and will only lead to greater pitfalls once the bulk reality catches upon us. So, are we condemned to see our hopes in the ability of digital tech to make the world a better place vanish, only to realise that they are in fact weakening the rule of law and human rights at home? Not necessarily. For one, a series of people and organisations, from Mozilla to the Eletronic Frontier Foundation, are working to keep the internet free, open and secure for activists and ordinary citizens. We need to involve our representative into a public debate about state eavesdropping practice and support the regulatory framework that is flexible enough to keep us secure from the abuses of state surveillance.