USP has been distinguished in a ranking of best universities in the world.
Below I did a review of a book prepared on the occasion of his first 70 years well lived ...
A venerable, but a young lady: USP at 70
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Review:
Shozo Motoyama (ed.):
USP 70: Images of a lived history
(São Paulo: University São Paulo, 2006, 704 p.; ISBN: 85-314-0953-5; other authors: Ana Maria Pinho Milk Gordon, Edson Emanuel Simões, Fernando Camelier, Marilda Nagamine, Pedro de Luna Vargas and Renato Teixeira) The
USP is undoubtedly the only university in Brazil in terms of figuring in a good position in the lists of world's best universities. According to a classification (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the China), it ranks 71 th in the ranking of universities in the Americas, but that number doubles when inserted into a global list. This is undoubtedly a great performance at the regional and international levels, it is among the universities "average" American. The USP is in any case, responsible for at least a quarter of Brazilian scientific production for over quarter of doctors trained each year and almost a fifth of the volume of masters graduates.
can, in any event, consider these numbers as a result more significant than for a university that recently completed seventy years, approaching, therefore, the average age of the Brazilian. His "life expectancy", however, was uncertain when it was established in 1934, succeeding to a remarkable effort expended by the Paulista elites to compensate for the fact of defeat and federal intervention as a consequence of defeat imposed on the constitutional revolution of 1932. At that time, the creation of the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters had to do based on the importation of brains (and arms), the lack of human capital in sufficient volume to sustain the activities of teaching, research and dissemination of knowledge in society, as stipulated the provisions of the decree that created it. As reported by some respondents, it lacked at the beginning of the simplest equipment, and the teachers and students bring from home, for example, glass and tubes to their experiences. With the emergence of research and development institutions, in federal and state levels, it can take root and grow to what it is today, an exemplary institution.
This book was coordinated by Shozo Motoyama, tireless researcher and popularizer of history of science and technology in Brazil, published at the time that this venerable lady turns 70, is presented as basically a collection of interviews and statements, collected between 2004 and 2005. This is the second and most important part of the volume: it occupies about 500 pages of interviews, amid dozens of photos, making a heavy album, whose "atomic mass" is probably proportional to the contribution of the USP training of the scientific spirit in Brazil. Are interviewed eight former presidents (Miguel Reale, in office twice, in 1949-50 and 1969-73, the Adolpho José Melphi, which ended its management in November 2005), several vice-chancellors and rectors of the pro- undergraduate, postgraduate, research and extension and culture in recent decades, a total of 32 personalities uspiana. The selection criteria were the performance of positions after the reform of the Statute USP in 1989, extending, however, the interviews with the presidents live before this period.
the interviews and subsequent organization of the material for the book six other researchers, most veteran employees to other projects of the Centre for the History of Science Inter USP. This part certainly will interest researchers and historians who withdraw these statements a valuable material to reconstruct the history of the most successful university in Brazil. But interviews can also be read as a collective history, with tasty passages about the personal life of each one of the teachers and researchers, largely them children of poor immigrants who have succeeded thanks to an extraordinary personal effort and family, opportunities opened up by the state enterprise that is New Orleans, and certainly some luck too. The personal itineraries, reported by mouth (in most cases for the first time), are fascinating and deserve, probably, insights into memory books for each of the protagonists. The reading of these reports confirms, even if need be, the greatest wealth of a nation lies in its own people, who is also the strength of a research and teaching as USP grade.
The first part deals with the history of USP and this goes far beyond the seventy years of official existence, reaching close to 180 years of national life since the first law school established in São Paulo in 1827. The release, signed by Shozo Motoyama, begins with an overview of the university's role in modern society, remade its difficult path in Brazil, pausing, then the insertion of USP in economic history, science and national politics. The university was formed from isolated schools and colleges, along with the creation of the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters, which should make the junction of the existing entities: the Faculty of Law of Largo San Francisco, the Polytechnic School (late nineteenth century), the Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Pharmacy and Dentistry and the School of Agriculture "Luiz de Queiroz", Piracicaba. Were hired, yet in 1934, 13 foreign teachers and four for the new Brazilian FFCL, whose struggle took place for years through their integration with the individual institutes, whose outlook was far more professional than strictly academic. According to one of those foreign masters, Levi-Strauss, the most important role was not exactly their education, but the discipline, the Brazilians were already very good, but scientifically undisciplined.
Built in 1934, only ten years after it becomes, in fact, an autonomous entity in the form of local authority and was awarded the state a global budget allocation, which she ran freely, except for salaries of teachers. Thanks to the role of Miguel Reale in the State Administrative Council - an organ of state intervention in the New - the Rector of USP now has status as secretary of state, going to ship directly to the chief executive of Sao Paulo. As shown Motoyama, USP has been internationalized since the beginning, not only by the contribution of foreign professors and researchers, but also by the early submission of its best students to continue research abroad at a time when it was non-existent research institutions. The full-time, created in 1946 under the initiative of José Reis, was essential for the integration of teaching and research.
USP vissicitudes followed all of its political history since the years of growing optimism in the era Vargas and Kubitschek, through restriction of thought contesting in the years of dictatorship, to the democratic revival in 1985, which brought other problems in the economics and administration. Some of the scientists expelled during the previous phase and again proposed the establishment of the Institute for Advanced Study in the rectory of Jose Goldemberg. Parallel Inter came the Centre for the History of Science, who came to play an important role in the memory of Brazilian scientific and technological production, whose work is reflected in this same volume of story. The new constitution in 1988, ordered the review of state constitutions and, in the same movement, the drafting of new statutes for the USP, as the existing, 1969, reflected the authoritarianism at the time. Dates from this time, the creation of the positions of pro-rectors, which on one hand a bureaucratic procedures, on the other decentralized activities, which seems to have been positive. More recently, USP headed towards its biggest integration with the community, having opened in 2005, a new campus in São Paulo, USP-Leste. With expansion of places and opening of new courses, innovative.
The core of the first part comprises three chapters, in which the authors deal, successively, the "long history" (ie, the route from 1827 to 1934), "construction of the university" (from the thirties to repression under dictatorship, in 1969) and "university resistant", ie the twenty years until 1989, when they approved the new statutes. The subsequent history is relatively fragmented and dispersed in the statements taken and should constitute the indispensable basis of an institutional history from 1989, perhaps under the same responsibility as well authors who conducted the collection of primary material. These three long chapters, supported by documentary sources and secondary literature on solid, is a beautiful racconto storico on the emergence and affirmation of the USP, in the broader context of Brazilian history and evolution of scientific and technological world.
institutional history does not necessarily mean devoid of opinions: next to the report of the actions and initiatives of presidents, history and the country's economic policy is followed with great detail. Some episodes are particularly painful in the life of the USP such as the purges of teachers occurred after the AI-5, December 1968: overall, during 1969, 70 teachers were dismissed for various units of the USP. The path of resistance and accommodation to the authoritarian regime is reported at length, in addition to reporting the management of each of the deans, to the administration of José Goldemberg (1986-1990), who chairs a phase of intensive reforms, with substantial changes in the institutional field, remaining until today. His greatest victory, with the other universities in São Paulo, was the achievement of budgetary autonomy, linked with the allocation of part of the collection of indirect tax state, the GST. Another initiative in his highly controversial at the time, was the introduction of teacher evaluation, the subject of great debate now common and responsible, in fact, achieved by the huge leap in scientific and technological production of USP.
Taken together, the seven authors of historical essays, covering virtually the entire history of Brazilian education until 1989 and the statements taken from three dozen individuals, under the coordination of Shozo Motoyama, and reaching the present day, constitute the broadest report what is known in the scenario Brazilian university, on an exemplary institution of teaching and research, truly unique in its category for the quality of scientific production among the best in the world. The book combines oral history with a careful reconstruction of the historical process that explains the reasons for the academic and scientific success. It should serve as a model for many other institutional histories of the great educational institutions in Brazil.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasilia, November 5, 2006 Revised
Strategic Partnerships (London: CGEE, n. 23, 2006, p.).
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