04/09/2019

Doctors from Cocal dos Alves and CNPq scholarships

Imagem reproduzida da reportagem do Fantástico

Reproduction of Marcelo Viana's column in Folha de S.Paulo.

Dona Isaura, my mother, is a retired primary school teacher in Portugal. When she began her career, teacher placement in public schools was based on an annual competition. Each candidate competed using their graduation grade, plus a bonus for each year of service. At a relative disadvantage, the younger teachers were given the less competitive schools, in small and remote places. The village in the Trás-os-Montes province where I informally started school at age 4 is surrounded by mountains that were snow-covered in winter and infested with hungry wolves.

The system was well-received because each teacher's grade improved over time, eventually leading to a permanent position. This fulfilled the State's obligation to provide a fundamental service – education – in all regions of the country. This solution, satisfactory for Portugal, would likely be unfeasible in Brazil, given its continental size and federal structure. But the problem here is the same. And satisfactory solutions still need to be found for education, health, and other basic services.

The Mais Médicos Program illustrates the problem well. The issue is usually framed in terms of a dichotomy: "importing" foreign professionals to fill vacancies left by nationals, or incentivizing (with what resources?) Brazilians to relocate to remote regions? These are difficult questions, which I won't attempt to answer here. Especially since I believe the real solution lies elsewhere.

On Sunday (1), Fantástico, from TV Globo, went to Cocal dos Alves (PI) to analyze the consequences of the cuts in scholarships from CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development), especially for the medalists of OBMEP (Brazilian Mathematics Olympiad). Each medalist receives a scholarship of R $ 100.00/month, for one year, while in basic education, and another of R $ 400.00/month during graduation, to deepen their studies in mathematics.

A municipality with fewer than 6,000 inhabitants and one of the 30 worst HDI (Human Development Index) scores in Brazil, Cocal is an unlikely breeding ground for OBMEP (Brazilian Mathematical Olympiad for Public Schools) award winners, to whom the Olympiad has offered life opportunities and success that were previously nonexistent. During the visit, journalists discovered something that even we at IMPA (Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics) didn't know: all three doctors working in Cocal were OBMEP medalists and developed and financed their studies with these modest scholarships!

To read the full text, visit the newspaper's website or check the print version .