Marcos Sergio Silva
Claudia Costin left his post at the World Bank to invest in a think tank of education in Brazil (Carol Carquejeiro)
Claudia Costin is back in the spacious apartment in Higienópolis in central Sao Paulo. Rediscovered its 8,000 books scattered throughout the halls and rooms and the view from Pacaembu Valley in the building that, before being built, she was born in an old manor house. Woman causes and challenges, we propose one more: a think tank of educational policy, a strategic group to encourage governments and businesses to invest in the sector. Something that transcends the public and the private.
Daughter of a Romanian businessman - Maurice Costin, who owns a factory drills and cutting tools - and Hungarian mother, Claudia met until early July global director mandate of the World Bank education in Washington (USA). Before, it had been a civil servant career, he held positions in the federal government, the governments Itamar Franco and Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the state levels (the São Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin) and municipal (with Mayor Eduardo Paes, in Rio de Janeiro ). He stayed away from the state capital to surrender to five people to the educational project, which will have offices in São Paulo, the
state capital, Brasilia and the United States.
state capital, Brasilia and the United States.
"I had mandate [the World Bank] and it's over now. I could stay if he wanted. But I want to create this think tank on education policy. Barbarians were the last two years. I met the education problems worldwide. I've been on six continents. But I will not leave things as they are in education [my] country. My idea is to help mayors and governors thinking educational policy, participating in the discussion process without getting involved with political parties and managers, "he says.
The dedication to education was a decision taken ten years ago, when completed 50 years. At the time, Claudia had just left the Secretariat of São Paulo State Culture. He had been criticized by assuming the position precisely because its profile in the federal government, was Managing Company of public administration - was minister of FHC Administration. "When I was 50, I made two decisions: read all the books that people talk and had never read - you know those 'books' worth of humanity? The second was going to run. And everyone laughed, because I did not exercise at all. In my generation, or you were athlete, or you were intellectual. As I was the intellectual, I did not even gymnastics. "
The option has become Secretary of Education of the City Hall of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes in management.Claudia always exposes the numbers achieved during the period in the folder, especially with the Tomorrow's Schools program, which prioritized educational units in more vulnerable places to poverty or trafficking and the worst rates of school performance. "The network average improvement of 22% in the ninth year [deployment]. In the Tomorrow's Schools, this increase was 33%. And yet not reached the level of the [Rio]. Of course, in a neighborhood that has shooting every day, schools are closed. But the dropout rate also fell brutally to less than half in the ninth year [of education], which is when the recruit trafficking militias recruit children to work. "
Claudia belatedly found its origins. When she was 37 years old, the Hungarian mother - today, Alzheimer's victim, lives in the apartment below the former minister - told in the book handwritten, the family bond with Judaism. Until then, São Paulo, who studied at the College Sion, also in Higienópolis, had been raised Catholic. The main finding was that the father Maurice, who died in 2012, had actually borrowed the surname Costin to escape the persecution of Jews in Europe in the year 1940. The popular Romanian surname replaced the Calmanovici - whose remaining endures today in Moldova former Soviet republic in the north of Romania, also known as Bessarabia.
"The world of private enterprise was very present in my training," he says. "My father is a Romanian who, having gone to France, came here fleeing the post-war and met my mother, too European. Neither went to college, but built their lives. My father had a small company that was born and grew. I was, somehow, crafted to be the successor. "
The global director of World Bank education opted, however, by other means: the political militancy. He came to be arrested twice during the military regime, and participated in left-wing underground groups like the PRC (Revolutionary Communist Party). "I very progressive, wanted to change the world, and participated very early in the student movements. I did not want to take over the company. Due to a number of reasons, he knew he wanted to work with education, psychology wanted to do. "
The course changed with the death of his older brother. The father then asked her to prepare to take over the family business. "I did not want at all! In my head, it was bourgeois thing. But did not want to hurt my father, he was already suffering too much. And I found that the FGV had a public administration course. I thought: I can do 'revolution' night and day work in public administration. I only told my dad that the course was of public administration after. Then I imagine it accepted that run the company was not for me. "
The company does not, but the public administration, yes. Costin spent a long period working as concursada in Fundap (Administrative Development Foundation of São Paulo). "That was so good," he recalls. "I had a number of people who wanted, at all costs, make public policy in another way. It was a core that we wanted to turn, combat clientelism, make a transparent thing, so that the best enxergasse population that is done. "
It was this goal that pursued in the years dedicated to the federal machine, career employee to the Minister of FHC Administration. "I always thought it was not the function of the State to produce goods and services," he says of the liberal proposal PSDB administration. "This [statist] agenda was an agenda of the military, which increased the state's size. Taking Petrobras, it was a matter of national pride - and look after what they did to her! I thought it was important to provide the state of a structure, not so many positions of trust, and more career people. "
The passage by the federal machine lasted until 2000, when he first took a job at the World Bank, the regional director. It has since been moving away from policies to functionalism and approaching the teacher profile that always wanted to explore. As Secretary of State of São Paulo culture, the main goal was to create a readership. In Brazil, he says, the average is only three books read per inhabitant per year - very low, even compared to the US, with only 10 books.
A cultural issue, that is still superimposed on the economic, even with the supposed rise called the pre-crisis "new class C". In issue 42 of FORBES Brazil, President of Bradesco, Luiz Carlos Trabuco, he said the new transformation of the country would rise by cultural society.
Claudia agrees. "On the cultural inclusion of the population that has become middle class, it is natural to have different aesthetic standards of the elite standards. It is the accumulated cultural repertoire. I have a horror of cultural prejudice. It's not their fault that the taste is different. But I believe that this prejudice is further aggravated because our elites are not very educated. Our elites do not attend museums in Brazil, just in travel. Children, people in training, go to Disney four or five times, but not amazing museums that exist in some countries. Our elites do not take their children to museums. So what right I will judge the new members of the middle class who have a distinct aesthetic standard of mine who just like what the TV shows? "Asks.
Claudia visit an experience in Antares, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, to explain how it is possible to transform this reality. There, education occupied the vacuum of public power that was then under the control of organized crime. It was a state action, but could be the private sector - as some foundations linked to major companies and banks, as Lemann (see p 36) or Social Itaú.
"We have reached a point where the elite values education, but she does not know that should be done to value it," he says. "It is getting into the 'how [do].' It is important that sectors of society to violate what corporatism [teachers] will not necessarily pay attention - not just better pay the teacher; We need to attract top talent and put the focus of public policy in the child, who must be at the center of the educational process. How to do this is the big question. "Whose answer it begins to also draw up this year, with its think tank.
