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Teachers and other staff were quick to compare Colégio Ceará to the bigger, prestigious franchise schools. In private, teachers and staff admitted that students at Colégio Ceará were not the same as those who attended the Big 4. According to staff, Colégio Ceará students were poorer and had fewer resources than those at the Big 4. Staff said that Colégio Ceará parents took little interest in their children’s academic careers: they worked long hours and had no time to go to school to address problems. In the classroom, however, staff used the Big 4 to boost self-esteem. In a third-year assembly, Professor Luane reported to students that Colégio Ceará was amongst the best colégios in Fortaleza. Students cheered as Luane listed Colégio Ceará alongside the Big 4. Likewise, Professor Daniel spoke to the afternoon class about his experiences teaching at Colégio Christus. “Someone said that the Christus students are better than you. But are they? I wouldn’t trade my Colégio Ceará students for anything. There’s no one better than you. You have good teachers. You will do the test and you will pass.” Here, Luane and Daniel bolstered students’ self-esteem by placing them alongside (richer and, presumably, better self-esteemed) students paying steep fees at the Big 4. Students drew their own comparisons in daily conversations. Mariela told me that she worried that she would not be as prepared as her friends who had gone to a Big 4 school for third year. “Colégio Farias Brito already had three simulados but we have only had one this year. I took the test for a scholarship [at Colégio Farias Brito] but they only offered me a 50% scholarship and that was not enough.” Though teachers had reassured them that all students were

the same, Colégio Ceará students expressed anxieties that the students at more expensive schools had better resources.

Colégio advertisements provided further fuel for these comparisons. A group of students gathered around Larícia as she studied a full-page Colégio Ari de Sá advertisement in the newspaper. (See Figure 4.2 for a similar ad.) The ad announced that 66 of the 160 spots in UFC Medicine had gone to Colégio Ari de Sá pupils. Pictures of the top 11 scorers – all Colégio Ari de Sá students – were included. The girls joked about the first placed boy’s long hair while Jorge pointed out that attractiveness increased as students’ places decreased. “Maybe it’s better to be number 8?” Jorge said with a smile. Underlying this careful examination of the advertisement was nervousness about concurrência. The pie chart included in the advert showed that Colégio Ari de Sá students occupied 41.2% of all the UFC Medicine spaces. Not one of the students discussed the fact that they would be competing for those leftover spaces that Colégio Ari de Sá (and the rest of the Big 4) did not capture. Influenced by these worries, students made and distributed copies of apostilas and simulados used by the Big 4 – as if Big 4 resources might be enough to add a few points to their scores.

On the other hand, students continually employed the trope of public schools as dangerous and chaotic places that had little to do with learning. Although Juliana had always attended public school before moving to Fortaleza a year earlier, she told me that I would be shocked to see a Fortaleza public school. “The girls wear really short skirts and everyone takes drugs.” Lucas’s mother taught public school and thus she had told Lucas that he did not belong there. “The girls get pregnant really young and there’s violence. They threaten the teachers!” Colégio Ceará students continually articulated that they were students who were interested in learning while public school students simply went to school for the free lunch and to fulfil Bolsa Família requirements46

. Public school was not an environment for learning.

46 _{This discourse is not new and/or unique to Fortaleza. Plank (1996) reported that}

Figure 4-2: An advertisement for Colégio Ari de Sá showing that five students placed first at federal universities and that Colégio Ari de Sá students occupied 66 of 160 spaces in UFC medicine.

Disturbing Comparisons: Quotas

These comparisons by students and teachers established a hierarchy of concurrência between schools. Students from the Big 4 would be difficult to beat but public school students would be less competition. A few teachers

attempted to disrupt this hierarchy by reminding students that the Big 4 poached the best students from public and private schools so these distinctions were not so clear; still, it was clear that Big 4 students – regardless of their background – would be difficult to beat. These constant comparisons helped fuel students’ anger over the new race-based and public school quotas for Brazil’s federal universities. The quotas required that, by 2015, 50% of spaces at federal universities be reserved for black, indigenous and public school students. These quotas would remain in place for 10 years – ostensibly, this would help the Brazilian education system to right itself. UFC had never instituted quotas but would allocate 12.5% of spaces on every course to quotistas (the top students fulfilling quota criteria) in the upcoming year. These quotas threatened to disturb the hierarchies that students had established in their comparisons.

Contrary to many of his colleagues, Professor Victor did not fill his lessons with bids to raise students’ self-esteem. When Victor presented a Current Events lesson on the subject, he admonished students for selfishly opposing the changes and went on to critique the view that all private schools were better than public schools. “MEC shuts down private universities that aren’t good but they don’t have the same power with private schools!” Many students, Victor claimed, had inflated grades and should not be passing but did so when their parents (who were, after all, paying) complained. Victor mocked Colégio Ceará students who posted their vestibular passes at private universities on Facebook. “Wow, Faculdade Pague Menos47_{! Your family must}

be so proud.” According to Victor, these students had given up by accepting places at paid-for, private universities and technical colleges with little academic merit. Several students weighed in, suggesting that quotas would diminish the quality of the federal university system. The conversation heated up with Victor barking:

Have you seen the parking lot at the medical school? It’s filled with R$100,000 carrões. How many of you in Colégio Ceará are already passing without quotas? None! In Law? No! The problem isn’t the

47_{Pague Menos (Pay Less) is a pharmacy that does not have a private degree-granting}

university. Rather, this was a biting criticism of some of the universities that students are proud to be attending. It was a bit like saying Boots University.

quotas – it’s the students who don’t study. When did a Colégio Ceará student pass in medicine at UFC? When?! Every year, Director Costa pressures us to make it happen but it doesn’t.

The mood in the room had turned heavy and solemn. Professor Victor had again (see chapter 1) lumped together Colégio Ceará students with public school students and other non-elites. This comparison incited outrage about societal inequalities but provided no individual happy endings for students. That day, Professor Victor laid out hard truths for a room full of wannabe doctors, lawyers, and engineers. Students were told that they were no better than public school students and that, historically, both Colégio Ceará and public school students had been shut out of the most prestigious courses – those courses that, it is widely imagined, offered social mobility. According to Victor, only rich people accessed these courses; however, quotas would help to rectify this situation. (This implied that the richest and the poorest would populate courses like Medicine and Law.) Colégio Ceará students must understand that they might need to suffer but the sacrifice that these students made would benefit the whole of society.

Nonetheless, Professor Victor also argued that if Colégio Ceará students studied harder and did not expect to be handed good grades (because their parents had paid), they might gain access to their dream courses – quotas could not stand in the way. Thus, even Victor peppered his realism with the promises that students who work hard enough would overcome. (In this sense, it was also not Victor’s or the rest of the teaching team’s fault that Colégio Ceará students were not admitted to Medicine or Law.) Quotas threatened to disturb the established private and public comparisons but “belief” in hard work remained.