Education Abroad: Better Than Riots

Until recently, Brazilian students were prone to expend their youthful idealism on attacking their universities. Ironically, most of them ignored the nearby favelas, the big-city slums that cry out for reform. Instead, they seemed to spend the winter rioting, the summer on the beaches or touring Europe. All too many were privileged rebels without a cause—a familiar phenomenon at other universities throughout the world.

Now the Brazilian students are doing something constructive. Two years ago, astute government officials decided to yoke the students' energies to the country's biggest problem—developing its vast interior....