The Role of Education in Modernization Drives in Brazil and in Sweden

In this chapter, we aim to analyse differences and similarities between Sweden and Brazil in terms of education performance. We emphasize two periods marked by globalization and modernization drives in education: the first period stretches from circa 1870 to about 1910, when economic integration and the Second Industrial Revolution opened up opportunities and posed challenges to both countries. For Brazil, we also extend our study to include the 1920s, which is an interesting decade in terms of expansion and innovation in education. The second period begins in 1945 and ends in the early 1970s, when increasing world trade and fast technological transformation challenged the two countries. Education played different roles in the two countries. In Brazil, education expanded as a weak and delayed response to the challenges posed by globalization. Thus, education did not play an important role in the limited modernization that took place from the 1870s to the 1970s. In Sweden, by contrast, education was an integral part of modernization processes. The country made a head start thanks to the relative abundance of human capital in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and education continued to play a vital role in the building of the welfare state between 1945 and 1970.