Alice went for eight weeks without Portuguese language classes after starting her first year of high school on Feb. 5 in this Brazilian city. Her chemistry teacher taught only two classes and disappeared. But the worst part is the classroom without air conditioning in the heat of more than 35 degrees Celsius some days during the southern hemisphere summer.
Hundreds of thousands of children and young people, and thousands of their teachers, drop out of regular schooling in Venezuela year after year, and most of those who remain go to the classroom only two or three days a week, highlighting the abysmal backwardness of education in the country.
Four years ago, Farzana Aktar Ruma, now 18, was almost married off without her consent.
Poverty no longer explains the high secondary school dropout rate in Argentina, one of the richest countries in Latin America.