page_title: Curitiba
section_title: Education
hierarchical_section_title: Curitiba / Education
context_page_description: Curitiba is one of the most important cities in the southern part of Brazil. Curitiba is the capital of the state of Paraná. The city has more than 1,800,000 people living in it. It covers an area of 430.9 km². It is the 7th largest Brazilian city and 4th largest in the Southern Cone. The city has the largest population and the largest economy in Southern Brazil. The urban area of Curitiba is looked after by 26 local governments and has 3,335,588 people living there.
context_section_description: In the 1990s, the city started a project called Faróis de Saber ("Lighthouses of Knowledge"). These Lighthouses are free educational centers which include libraries, Internet access, and other cultural resources. This community libraries works with municipal schools, have a collection of approximately 5000 books, and be cultural reference and leisure for the community, and are designed to diversify the opportunities of access to knowledge, expanding the area of formal education.
  In each quarter of the city, these "Lighthouses of Knowledge" have been implanted containing library and room of computer science, to public use, mainly by students; job training, social welfare and educational programs are coordinated, and often supply labor to improve the city's amenities or services, as well as education and income.
  Among the Brazilian capitals, Curitiba has the lowest rate of illiteracy, and also number 1 in education between the Brazilian capitals.
  Curitiba has many universities, being Universidade Federal do Paraná ("Federal University of Paraná") the most important of the region, and the oldest of Brazil.
  Portuguese is the official national language, and is the primary language used in schools. But English and Spanish are part of the official high school curriculum.
caption: The "Lighthouse of Knowledge"
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