In Brazil, more than in any other Southern country, school is an unequally distributed social product. Access to it depends not only on such distinctive standards as socioeconomic position, sex, ethnicity, location of residence etc., but also on the type of network attended (public, private). This paper analyses the historical and progressive constitution of a multispeed schooling network. The republican political speech, which highlights the egalitarian and homogenizing function of school, has been gradually losing its substance. The heterogeneity resulting from the current fragmentation of the Brazilian schooling system into various networks reproduces, magnifying them, all social inequities and lastingly endangers the social and economical development of this country.
Brazil; social inequalities; public education; particular education
