Lightening a candle

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the author’s activities as a researcher and public intellectual in Brazil, and his involvement on issues of higher education, science and technology, education reform and education policies in general.

Section snippets

The land of the future

In 1940 Stefan Zweig, the famous Austrian Jewish writer, moved to the Brazilian town of Petropolis, scaping Nazism, where he wrote “Brazil, Land of the Future” (Zweig and Stern, 1942). He saw it as a primitive country, naïve, but beautiful, socially diverse, endowed with abundant resources, and free from the conflicts and bitterness that plagued Europe. Europe was dying, he himself committed suicide in 1944, but a new and better world was on the making.

My Jewish parents also came from Europe to 

Humboldt for the people

Most of the population was illiterate, but, for the upper and ascending classes, there were two prestigious public schools, the Ginásio Mineiro (later named “Colégio Estadual de Minas Gerais”), for boys, preparing them for the learned professions of Law, Medicine and Engineering, and the Instituto de Educação, a normal school for girls, who were not expected to go do universities but could start a career as schoolteachers while waiting for a husband. The other possibility were the religious

Authoritarian modernization

These were the years of the cold war, and in 1964 a military government took over, throwing intellectuals and student activists in jails or forcing them to flee the country. I was caught in the middle, left the country for Norway, Argentina and later for my doctoral studies in Political Science at Berkeley, and returned to Brazil in 1969. I had a doctoral dissertation to write,and expected that, as a well-educated young social scientist, I could contribute to understand better the country’s

The scientific community

My next task at FINEP was to join its research department to run an ambitious project on the history of Brazilian science and technology. It was José Pelúcio’s idea. He had already discussed it with Isaac Kerstenetzky and the economist Annibal Villela, the author of several works on the history of industrialization in Brazil. Villela had outlined a proposal, but was unable to pursue the work, which fell into my hands. From what I understood, the objective was to show how technology had been

Higher education in the New Republic

In 1985, after 20 years in power, the military government retreated. The ambitious development plans of the 1970 did not survive the combination of excessive ambitions and the oil and debt crises, and the pressure for a return to civilian run was increasing. In a negotiated transition, the would-be first civil president, Tancredo Neves, died just before being sworn and was replaced by a traditional politician, José Sarney, who had supported the military until the last moment. One of the

The higher education research group

In 1987 I received an invitation to come to the University of São Paulo – USP – to help with the establishment of a research group on higher education, Nupes, which was to become the first academic program dedicated to the subject in Brazil, if not in Latin America. The invitation came from Eunice R. Durham, an anthropologist who was an adviser to the university’s rector, José Goldenberg, a well-known physicist who later played important roles as Minister of education and the organizer of Rio

Science and technology for a new world

Before IBGE, however, there was another challenge. The World Bank has been supporting Brazil’s science and technology sector with significant loans since 1984, and, in negotiations for a third renewal, one requisite was that Brazil should prepare a policy paper making explicit the country’s science and technology policies. I was invited to coordinate this work, and created a working group, based at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation Business School in São Paulo, to do it. In our final

The Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE)

IBGE is Brazil’s national statistical office, responsible for the production all kinds of demographic and economic and geographical data, including the decennial census, household surveys, national accounts, employment statistics, cost of living indexes and mapping. It was established in 1936 as a national agency, with one branch in each municipality, and a central office in Rio de Janeiro to process and publish all this information. In 1994 Brazil’s economy was in shambles, annual inflation

Secondary education

After IBGE, I did not return to my previous institutions. I led, for a few years, an effort to establish a branch of the American Institutes for Research in Brazil, and then joined the Institute for Studies on Labor and Society (Instituto de Estudos do Trabalho. Sociedade – IETS) in Rio de Janeiro, that had as its focus issues of social policy in the city. I also joined the Institute of Studies on Economic Policy (Instituto de Estudos de Política Econômica – IEPE – Casa das Garças), created by

Lightening a candle

I am not sure, of course, that I was always right in the policies that I helped to put forward and on the stands I took in the several debates on science, technology, higher, secondary and vocational education in which I participated throughout these years. It is evident, however, that my views often found themselves in the minority. Through these experiences, I came to realize that policy implementation was mostly determined by a combination of inertia and the protection of established