It’s not really a question of saying “fuck science”.
Rather, the issue here would seem to be the element of victim-blaming in this program’s formulation. Look at the riverside communities in which the social workers arrive in one of the videos. Are these people poor because their parents never gave eye contact?
Or are they poor because of the infrastructure, ressources, education and medical services that’s available to them? Rural Brazil, I will add as a service to those who might not know, is known for a rich tradition of songs, stories, religious practices and other cultural elements which could hardly be transmitted if the parents did not know how to engage with their children.
In other words, while parents’ lack of engagement with their children can obviously cause a lot of problems and some parents therefore could indeed be in need of coaching, such lack of engagement and need of coaching could never be a primary cause of poverty in a country like Brazil with its monumental inequality and vastly deficient infrastructure.
Thus, the program “Criança feliz” has been heavily criticized by professionals in Brazil - among other things, for defunding existing & actually working programs for the improvement of poor people’s lives through infrastructure and services and replacing them with charity based on unpaid volunteers.
Which is also why the Brazilian Council of Social Workers (CFESS) is completely against this project spearheaded by the nation’s first lady, Marcela Temer.
Like I said, it’s not a question of criticizing the science. I have no doubt that in some cases, people have their outcomes afflicted by parents who don’t know to engage with them. I’ve no doubt that you can find parents in poor communities in Brazil, or in rich communities in Europe, who’d benefit from such coaching. However, to posit such parental engagement deficits as the reason for poverty in a country like Brazil, to the extent that coaching could eliminate poverty in future generations, is simply nonsensical. And, as I said, to some extent victim-blaming.
