Latin America: Relearning old lessons

Bello

Latin America’s enduring need for the rule of law, education and openness

Feb 1st 2014 | From the print edition

WE HAVE long taken notice of Latin America. The leading article in The Economist’s very first issue, in 1843, called on Britain to slash tariffs on the import of Brazilian sugar and cotton. Our coverage of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-17 is cited by historians. More recently, in 1997, we recognised the progress of Latin America in establishing (or re-establishing) democracies and in overcoming hyperinflation and debt crises by creating a separate Americas section (in which we included Canada).

This week sees the start of a new column, which will give further depth to our coverage of Latin America. It is tribute to the region’s expanding weight in the world. Brazil and Mexico now count among the ten biggest economies by purchasing power. Latin America is of critical importance in energy (it has a fifth of the world’s oil reserves), food production and the environment (with half the surviving rainforest). Cuba excepted, democracy holds sway throughout the region, though it is under threat in some places. Thanks to faster growth, 60m Latin Americans have left poverty since 2002; income inequality, a perennial problem, has fallen.

The reality is rather different. Brazil seeks global influence in its own right; Mexico’s close economic ties to the United States will be reinforced by its recent energy reform; and the free-trading countries of the Pacific seaboard look to Asia, in tacit despair at the archaic statism of places like Venezuela and Argentina.Latin America’s leaders constantly proclaim their unity. They did so again this week in Havana at a meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a regional organisation formed in 2011 solely to distinguish “our America” (in the phrase of José Martí, a Cuban patriot) from the United States and Canada.

Politics and trade are not the only faultlines. Latin America is fragmented by huge distances, by peculiarities of history, and even by language—not just Spanish, but also Portuguese in Brazil, French in Haiti, and English in several Caribbean islands. Such diversity made this column very hard to name. Brazil and Mexico, the region’s two giants, share no heroes and few points of cultural or historical reference with each other, or with Spanish-speaking South America.

After much head-scratching, we opted to name the column after Andrés Bello (1781-1865), a Venezuelan-born polymath, educator, writer and diplomat. If Simón Bolívar and the other 19th-century liberators provided the ramshackle hardware of Latin American independence, it was Bello (pronounced “BAY-yo”) who did more than anyone to create the software of nation-building.

His biography is an early testament to globalisation. Having spent 19 years in London as an often-unpaid envoy for independence, he moved to Chile, where he ran the foreign ministry and was the founding rector of the University of Chile. He drew up the country’s civil code, which proclaimed the equality of citizens before the law. It was quickly copied in half a dozen countries in the region, and had a significant impact in others—including Brazil and Mexico. He also wrote an influential treatise on international law, which argued for the equal status of nations, as well as a bestselling Spanish grammar for Latin Americans.

Bello was a liberal, but a realistic one, who believed that strong political institutions were essential to thwart anarchy and for liberty to flourish. Whereas Bolívar argued that the new republics needed the discipline of top-down authority, Bello thought that to succeed they needed to create citizens, through universal public education and, above all, the rule of law (“our true patria”, he once wrote). In addition, he was an advocate for trade and an internationalist, insisting that the new republics should remain open to the ideas and products of the world.

The causes espoused by Bello—the rule of law, education and openness—are enduring ones. They loom especially large in Latin America today, as the great commodity boom wanes. Populists peddling an inward-looking nationalism, who have ruled by state diktat and political favour rather than by law, are being found out at last, as this month’s devaluations in Argentina and Venezuela show.

The region once again has to pay attention to education, productivity and competitiveness if it is to sustain growth, and to the rule of law it is to turn back the tide of criminal violence that threatens its citizens’ quality of life. In 21st-century Latin America the teachings of the region’s greatest 19th-century public intellectual are more relevant than ever.

From the print edition: The Americas

Let's Talk More About Teaching By Deborah Meier

 on January 28, 2014 9:52 AM

Deborah Meier continues her conversation with CitizenshipFirst's Robert Pondiscio.

Dear Robert,

Hurrah. Yes, we agree about immersing kids in a community that finds the world a fascinating place. As a graduate of Central Park East once said to Alice Seletsky* (his former 5th/6th grade teacher): "I had a decent job, but it wasn't interesting, and I remembered how you said over and over to us how interesting the world was, so I'm going back to school hoping to get interested again."

We started the secondary school for a similar reason. Graduates of our 6th grade complained that they managed to cope with junior high and high school, but they rarely found anything that truly intellectually interested them again. Maybe we could agree that high on our list of purposes for education should be preparation for living an interesting life!

But part of the reason for this sad history of curriculum is that we were pounded over the head with programs that promised to raise test scores—without teaching any content. Just teaching how to read, for example. (P.S. The analogy between food and reading isn't the greatest. We eat no matter what, but not so for reading.) Nor was it teachers who invented all these programs and theories about "learning to think" rather than  actually "thinking." The new wave is teaching kids to read nonfiction without expecting, even allowing, them to delve into the background knowledge. Bringing out background knowledge is how we make sense of anything we encounter in the world. In reading nonfiction it is even more essential (and the background knowledge requires spending more than a few minutes of pre-reading exercises).  My reading ability in astronomy is limited by my lack of knowledge of astronomy, not my lack of reading skill.

The skill/drill stuff wasn't "invented" by teachers. But, of course, since they were insufficiently well-educated about the nature of learning and insufficiently self-confident in their own expertise they either fell for it or were coerced into it. It was primarily progressive educators who resisted.

The Workshop Center in Open Education at Teachers College (led by Lillian Weber) was alive and well when I came to New York City in the late 1960s, as a place where teachers explored subject matter and also (in the process of their own learning) figured out ways to teach aspects of it to kids. It focused on science and history. City College closed it about a decade ago.

Ted Sizer noticed this phenomenon in his study of secondary education in the United States (Horace's Compromise). The difference between schools for the rich and poor was both how and what was taught. Rich kids were far more likely to be expected to delve deeply into material and have their own ideas.

That's my critique of the current press for earlier schooling. It's focused on isolated skills, too. Half a day—at least—is spent on reading skills. Even when books are read to kids, the focus is on specific skills rather than appreciation for the narrative story or the illustrations. Teachers are taught to stop and ask questions about phonics and content—over and over. It destroys the literary strengths and wonder of the story itself.  Even nonfiction is focused on reading skills rather than subject matter.  Ugh.

Science and history and social studies have been crowded out of early childhood—and elementary school—in the interest of raising test scores. For poor kids.

And part of the argument is that since "those kids" need to catch up, they can't afford the kind of learning that good subject-matter immersion rests on, as though depriving them of a rich education helps them catch up. Teachers are told to directly teach science words, devoid of science, to expand their vocabularies.

Maybe we agree?

I started teaching (subbing actually) in the early '60s in Chicago elementary schools—largely in low-income and African-American communities. They were not OK. It's our misunderstanding of the impact of poverty that partly led us astray. I believe they needed more—not less—of precisely the kind of schooling the rich could afford. The gap in how much money we spent on them, and the quality and quantity of materials, and the nature of the professional development between rich and poor schools was and remains enormous. It may be even greater today than it was in 1967, when I came to NYC.

The gap between per-pupil costs in private and suburban schools vs. low-income schools continues to grow. But equally sad was the way we taught. And test scores are precisely the wrong tool for changing this. Tests encourage more rote teaching, not more in-depth teaching.

Sadly, too, the best college education I know of—with small classes, seminars, etc. are the hardest for poor kids to get into. Imagine if City College did what Brandeis does—encourages students to invite faculty to lunch (in the faculty lunch room) by making such encounters free!

The students in the school I was part of developing learned about the whole wide world. We wanted to make them feel "at home," anywhere. We used the city a lot—so that the museums got to know our kids and our kids thought these museums belonged to them. They do.

In the secondary school we sent kids into workplaces with interesting adults for a half-day a week to widen their network: That was foremost. We started visiting colleges in 7th grade—alongside introducing them to other locations in the (primarily) Northeast. We made sure every kid also took a course (sometimes just audited) at one of the public colleges in New York City. We hoped we made our work seem like fun, a fascinating way to spend one's life—and a powerful occupation. And, no surprise, a disproportionate number of our Central Park East graduates are now teaching K-12.

That was precisely the point of the kind of graduation exams we developed—ones that valued what we valued: being able to present oneself and one's work, and defend it, orally and in writing, before a real-life adult audience.

But none of that happens easily, and most of it rests upon a profound respect for the children, their families, and their communities;  for their ability to cope with much that we have never had to cope with ourselves. And to appreciate the love they have for their children (which we can't compete with). The relationship between families and schools has always—historically—been complicated by class differences, and by deciding who is to blame (teacher or mother). Even for the rich (although in reverse in terms of their social class). Breaking these barriers is essential, and more so if the children are the less economically advantaged (vs. more advantaged) than their teachers. And having a structure that enables one to get to know families and students better makes this feasible.

So I start with those two: small class sizes, smaller (surely under 1,000 students) schools, and a schedule that gives teachers time to collaborate with each other and with their students and their families. (I visited a public school in Brooklyn—New American Academy—that provides more than six hours a week for faculty to meet together in teams during the school day, plus one meeting a week after school. And the adult teaching load (K-5) is 22 to one, or less.

Of course, one can have a 5-to-1 ratio and still stand in front of a row of desks and lecture as though facing 3,005.

So, let's talk more about teaching!

Deborah

P.S. I think that—and especially given the present job market (fewer jobs)—young people will still go into teaching. But I think they'll leave earlier. It's no longer a "career" choice, but a "start-up" occupation.

P.S. 2. Read My Name is Alice: Collected essays by *Alice Seletsky. To find the book, go to lulu.com, click on "Bookstore," and search for "Alice Seletsky."

How Preschool Got Hot

JAN. 29, 2014

Gail Collins

• 
  

All of a sudden, early childhood education is really, really popular. Everybody’s favorite. If early childhood education were an actor, it would be Tom Hanks or Meryl Streep. If it were a video game, it would be Candy Crush or Angry Birds, minus the spyware.

The other night at the State of the Union speech, President Obama mentioned “high-quality early education” and John Boehner applauded. Boehner applauded early education! Paul Ryan likes it, too. Prekindergarten is so in, the guys on “Duck Dynasty” would probably have a good word for it.

Kudos, guys! We certainly don’t want to complain about this. Early education is one of the best tools for breaking the poverty-to-poverty trap. Unfortunately, it only works if it’s high quality, and high quality is expensive. Yet very little of this newfound enthusiasm comes with serious money attached.

“Everybody seems to agree we need some sort of national effort to provide preschool education to our kids. What we don’t have is any discussion about how to pay for it,” said Senator Patty Murray who is, I am pretty sure, the first former preschool teacher ever to run the Senate Budget Committee.Last year, in his State of the Union speech, President Obama called for universal preschool for 4-year-olds, to be paid for by a tobacco tax that would raise $78 billion over 10 years. The prekindergarten idea was hailed throughout the nation. The tax part did not go anywhere. To say it was dead on arrival at Congress is an insult to the word “dead.”

When President Obama’s detailed budget proposal comes out, he’ll presumably include some way of paying for his universal preschool idea. Perhaps it will be the tobacco tax again. Perhaps you will never know because, in recent years, the presidential budget has all the traction and clout of a small mouse attempting to cross a frozen lake. During a windstorm. While wearing bedroom slippers.

Here in New York, we’re having a political dispute that pits the let’s-just-cheer camp against the pick-a-tax crowd. Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to pay for universal prekindergarten for New York City 4-year-olds with an increase in the income tax rate for high income city residents. He got elected on this issue, but he needs the state’s permission.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he’ll just give de Blasio some money out of the state budget. This is an election year, and Cuomo is definitely not targeting any taxpayers, even if the ones in question are jumping up and down and waving their arms to get attention.

The mayor wants money the city can count on to keep coming every year. It’s a very interesting argument. If New York is lucky, the nation will find the debate so fascinating that everyone will forget about the fact that on Tuesday, shortly after Obama called for more quality prekindergarten classes, a congressman from New York City threatened to throw a reporter off the Capitol balcony. This had nothing to do with early childhood education, but you know how people talk.

 

Cuomo’s estimate of how much it would cost to do preschool for the entire state is lower than de Blasio’s estimate for just New York City. Which is, on a per-pupil basis, much lower than the amount New Jersey spends on a much-praised prekindergarten program. (Cheers to New Jersey for your effort to provide quality early education to the state’s poorest children. We are so impressed that we will leap right over the fact that you only did it because a judge made you.)

One way to dodge the responsibility for coming up with actual cash for a great leap in preschool financing is to argue, as Cuomo does, that you need to roll these things out slowly. “To do it on a large scale is very difficult,” said Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution, a former adviser to the Bush administration. But Haskins thinks poor children’s needs are so great, and so immediate, that it’s worth the risk. “We’re desperate. These kids are coming into school already a grade behind,” he said.

A quarter of the youngest Americans are poor. We need to get to them quickly, and do the job right, well before they’re 4. And while we should start with the neediest families, if the programs are good, middle-class parents are rightfully going to point out that they need help, too.

It’ll be a huge number of kids, and the classes have to be really small. Also, the teachers have to get much better pay. They go into the business out of love, but when you are talking about medial salaries of $27,000 a year, sometimes love is not enough. All in all, we’re talking about a ton of money.

So here’s the question: How much of the new enthusiasm for early childhood education is real, and how much is just an attempt to dodge the whole inequality debate? Maybe we could agree that no politician is allowed to mention pre-k without showing us the money.

Failure and Error among Doctors and Teachers by larrycuban

I had a conversation with a friend* last week about the two posts detailing my failures as a teacher with three students I have had over the years. He has practiced Family Medicine for over a half-century in Pittsburgh and for years helped resident physicians in doing medical research and now works with hospital residents in improving communication with patients.  He pointed out to me how similar teachers experiencing failures with students is to physicians erring in diagnoses or treatments (or both) of their patients.

I was surprised at his making the comparison and then began to think about the many books I have read about medicine and the art and science of clinical practice. In my library at home, I had two with well-thumbed pages authored by doctors who, in the  first dozen pages, detailed mistakes either they had made with patients or errors committed by other physicians on them or their families.

In one, Jerome Groopman, an oncologist, described what occurred with his 9-month old child after a series of doctor misdiagnoses that almost caused his son's death. A surgeon, who was a friend of a friend, was called in at the last moment to fix an intestinal blockage and saved his son.

In the other book, surgeon Atul Gawande described how he almost lost an Emergency Room patient who had crashed her car when he fumbled a tracheotomy only for patient to be saved by another surgeon who successfully got the breathing tube inserted. Gawande also has a chapter on doctors' errors. His point, documented by a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine (1991) and subsequent reports  is that nearly all physicians err.

If nearly all doctors make mistakes, do they talk about them? Privately  with people they trust, yes. In public, that is, with other doctors in academic hospitals, the answer is also yes. There is an institutional mechanism where hospital doctors meet weekly called Morbidity and Mortality Conferences (M & M for short) where, in Gawande's words, doctors "gather behind closed doors to review the mistakes, untoward events, and deaths that occurred on their watch, determine responsibility, and figure out what to do differently (p. 58)." He describes an M & M (pp.58-64) at his hospital and concludes: "The M & M sees avoiding error as largely a matter of will--staying sufficiently informed and alert to anticipate the myriad ways that things can go wrong and then trying to head off each potential problem before it happens" (p. 62). Protected by law, physicians air their mistakes without fear of malpractice suits.

Nothing like that for teachers in U.S. schools. Sure, privately, teachers tell one another how they goofed with a student, misfired on a lesson, realized that they had provided the wrong information, or fumbled the teaching of a concept in a class. Of course,  there are scattered, well-crafted professional learning communities in elementary and secondary schools where teachers feel it is OK to admit they make mistakes and not fear retaliation. They can admit error and learn to do better the next time. In the vast majority of schools, however, no analogous M & M exists (at least as far as I know).

Of course, there are substantial differences between doctors and teachers. For physicians, the consequences of their mistakes might be lethal or life-threatening. Not so, in most instances, for teachers. But also consider other differences:

*Doctors see patients one-on-one; teachers teach groups of 20 to 35 students four to five hours a day.

*Most U.S. doctors get paid on a fee-for-service basis; nearly all full-time public school teachers are salaried.

*Evidenced-based practice of medicine in diagnosing and caring for patients is more fully developed and used by doctors than the science of teachingaccessed by teachers.

While these differences are substantial in challenging comparisons, there are basic commonalities that bind teachers to physicians. First, both are helping professions that seek human improvement. Second, like practitioners in other sciences and crafts, both make mistakes. These commonalities make comparisons credible even with so many differences between the occupations.

Helping professions.

From teachers to psychotherapists to doctors to social workers to nurses, these professionals use their expertise to transform minds, develop skills, deepen insights, cope with feelings and mend bodily ills. In doing so, these helping professions share similar predicaments.

*Expertise is never enough. For surgeons, cutting out a tumor from the colon will not rid the body of cancer; successive treatments of chemotherapy are necessary and even then, the cancer may return.

Some high school teachers of science with advanced degrees in biology, chemistry, and physics believe that lessons should be inquiry driven and filled with hands-on experiences while other colleagues, also with advanced degrees, differ. They argue that naïve and uninformed students must absorb the basic principles of biology, chemistry, and physics through rigorous study before they do any “real world” work in class.

In one case, there is insufficient know-how to rid the body of different cancers and, in the other instance, highly knowledgeable teachers split over how students can best learn science. As important as expertise is to professionals dedicated to helping people, it falls short—and here is another shared predicament--not only for the reasons stated above but also because professionals seeking human improvement need their clients, patients, and students to engage in the actual work of learning and becoming knowledgeable, healthier people.

*Helping professionals are dependent upon their clients’ cooperation.Physician autonomy, anchored in expertise and clinical experience, to make decisions unencumbered by internal or external bureaucracies is both treasured and defended by the medical profession. Yet physicians depend upon patients for successful diagnoses and treatments. If expertise is never enough in the helping professions, patients not only constrain physician autonomy but also influence their effectiveness.

While doctors can affect a patient’s motivation, if that patient is emotionally depressed, is resistant to recommended treatments, or uncommitted to getting healthy by ignoring prescribed medications the physician is stuck. Autonomy to make decisions for the welfare of the patient and ultimate health is irrelevant when patients cannot or do not enter into the process of healing.

For K-12 teachers who face captive audiences among whom are some students unwilling to participate in lessons or who defy the teacher’s authority or are uncommitted to learning what the teacher is teaching, then teachers have to figure out what to do in the face of students’ passivity or active resistance.

Failure and error occur in both medical and teaching practices.

Both doctors and teachers, from time to time, err in what they do with patients and students. Patients can bring malpractice suits to get damages for errors. But that occurs sometimes years after the mistake. What hospital-based physicians do have, however, is an institutionalized way of learning (Mortality and Morbidity conferences) from their mistakes so that they do not occur again. So far, among teachers there are no public ways of admitting mistakes and learning from them (privately, amid trusted colleagues, such admissions occur). For teachers, admitting error publicly can lead directly to job loss).

So while doctors, nurses, and other medical staff have M & M conferences to correct mistakes, most teachers lack such collaborative and public ways of correcting mistakes (one exception might be in special education where various staff come together weekly or monthly to go over individual students' progress).

Books and articles have been written often about how learning from failure can lead to success. Admitting error without fear of punishment is the essential condition for such learning to occur. There is no sin in being wrong or making mistakes, but in the practice of schooling children and youth today, one would never know that.

_______________________

* Dr. Joel Merenstein and I have been close friends since boyhood in Pittsburgh (PA)

Más de 2,5 millones de niños no asisten a la escuela en América Latina

La Unesco advirtió que la región padece una "crisis de aprendizaje" que golpea más fuerte a los sectores desfavorecidos

La Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura (Unesco) destacó que América Latina y el Caribe están cerca de lograr una matriculación universal a laeducación primaria con una tasa de 95 por ciento, pero advirtió que "aún hay más de 2,5 millones de niños fuera de la escuela en la región".

"Además, la evaluación de si la educación primaria universal ha sido lograda debe basarse en medidas de finalización en vez de matriculación, que a menudo dan un panorama optimista engañoso", remarcó el informe "Enseñanza y aprendizaje: lograr la calidad para todos", divulgado este miércoles.

Como ejemplo, la Unesco señaló que Guatemala tuvo una tasa neta de matriculación de 98% en 2010, pero se esperaba que sólo el 79% de los niños en edad de iniciar la educación básica terminara ese nivel.

El organismo también apuntó que, a nivel global, 250 millones de niños en edad de cursar la educación primaria no están alcanzando los niveles básicos de aprendizaje, lo que cuesta 129.000 millones de dólares por año a los gobiernos. Y también precisó que existen enormes disparidades entre países de América Latina y el Caribe. En ese sentido, enfatizó que la pobreza puede afectar la capacidad de los niños para aprender.

La pobreza puede afectar la capacidad de los niños para aprender, según la Unesco

La proporción de estudiantes de primaria que obtienen las capacidades básicas de lectura va de alrededor del 95% en Argentina, Chile, Cuba, México y Uruguay, a menos del 80% en República Dominicana, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua y Paraguay. El desempeño en matemáticas es incluso peor, con sólo el 70% de los niños de la región aprendiendo lo básico.

En Nicaragua, donde el 60% de los niños alcanza el parámetro mínimo de aprendizaje en lectura, sólo el 37% lo logra en matemáticas. En Chile, las proporciones son de casi 100% para lectura y 20% para matemáticas.

Si bien en Costa Rica y Uruguay al menos el 80% de los niños completa la educación primaria y alcanza el parámetro mínimo en matemáticas independientemente de si son ricos o pobres, la brecha entre grupos socioeconómicos es notable en otros países.

En El Salvador, el 42% de los niños de los hogares más pobres completan la educación primaria y dominan los conocimientos básicos, frente al 84% entre los más ricos. En Guatemala, la disparidad va de sólo el 25% a casi el 75 por ciento.

Vivir en áreas rurales, que a menudo carecen de maestros y recursos pedagógicos, también puede ser una barrera para el aprendizaje. En Panamá, por ejemplo, las brechas en desempeño en matemáticas y lectura entre los estudiantes rurales y urbanos exceden los 15 puntos porcentuales.

Las minorías y los sectores rurales tienen problemas para acceder a una mejor educación

Igualmente, hablar una lengua minoritaria puede ser una desventaja, pues "la discriminación que enfrentan algunos grupos indígenas o étnicos se ve reforzada por el hecho de que el idioma usado en las aulas puede no ser el que hablan", de acuerdo con el reporte.

En Perú, los hablantes de español tienen siete veces más probabilidades que los de lenguas indígenas de lograr un nivel satisfactorio en lectura, y en Guatemala sólo el 47% de los estudiantes pobres de entornos rurales que hablan idiomas nativos alcanzan el parámetro mínimo en matemáticas, frente al 88% de los hispanohablantes ricos de la ciudad.

La Unesco resaltó que la crisis de aprendizaje no puede ser superada a menos que las políticas se enfoquen en mejorar la educación de los grupos desfavorecidos, para lo cual "brindar a los maestros la capacidad para cumplir con los programas educativos es una prioridad".

Para ello, propuso una estrategia de cuatro puntos para lograr ese objetivo, empezando por atraer a los "mejores maestros" y "reclutar profesores de minorías étnicas". En segundo lugar, mejorar la capacitación de los educadores mediante programas que les brinden "un buen entendimiento de las materias que van a impartir".

En tercer lugar, según la Unesco, se requiere "poner a los maestros donde más se necesitan", para lo cual sugirió brindar incentivos financieros y buena vivienda para promover el despliegue de buenos educadores en áreas remotas y rurales.

Finalmente, la estrategia prevé "proporcionar incentivos para retener a los mejores maestros", ofreciéndoles una atractiva senda profesional "con criterios de promoción que tengan en cuenta iniciativas de los educadores para abordar la diversidad y apoyar a los estudiantes desaventajados".

Corrupção rouba até 2,3% do PIB brasileiro

Legislação, aprovada na esteira das manifestações de junho, entra em vigor hoje com a figura de “pena de morte” a empresas que corrompem servidores públicos para obter benefícios

• CARLA JIMÉNEZ São Paulo 28 JAN 2014 - El País

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As manifestações de junho do ano passado continuam rendendo frutos, e a lei anticorrupção, que punirá empresas envolvidas em atos ilícitos contra o poder público, é um deles. A nova legislação passa a valer neste dia 29 e pretender ser mais uma ferramenta para estancar o dreno de recursos que a corrupção representa no Brasil. Um estudo da Federação das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo (Fiesp), elaborado em 2012, projetava que entre 1,38% e 2,3% do Produto Interno Bruto (PIB) se perdiam entre ações corruptas no país. Levando em conta o último PIB consolidado disponível, do ano de 2012, que fechou em 4,4 trilhões de reais, isso equivale a, no mínimo, uma perda nominal entre 61,7 bilhões reais e 101,2 bilhões de reais.

Não se sabe ao certo se esse número é próximo da realidade, até porque é difícil captar atos ilícitos que estão em andamento neste exato momento, nos subterrâneos do poder e das corporações. Mas, independentemente dos valores envolvidos, a corrupção é uma praga que revolta os brasileiros, que pagam impostos compulsoriamente, e não recebem seus benefícios de volta. O quadro atual coloca o país na posição 72, entre 177 países no mundo, no Índice de Percepção da Corrupção (Corruption Perception Index), de 2013, elaborado pelo grupo Transparency International. A lei, inaugurada hoje, vai punir empresas envolvidas em atos que venham a lesar o erário do Estado, em todas as esferas, como suborno de funcionários do poder público.

Ou seja, com anos de atraso, o Brasil passa a punir também as empresas que corrompem, e não só o agente corrupto. “Esta lei vem fechar um quebra-cabeça fundamental”, afirma Pierpaolo Cruz Bottini, professor-doutor de direito penal da Universidade de São Paulo. “Até agora as punições estavam direcionadas à pessoa física. Processava-se o funcionário, o dirigente público e a empresa ficava impune. Agora, ela será punida de forma objetiva, não importa se sabia ou não das falcatruas em andamento. Se foi beneficiada, ela será multada”, explica Bottini.

Inspirada nas regras já vigentes em países como os Estados Unidos (com o Foreign Corruption Practice Act) e a Inglaterra (Bribery Act), a nova legislação estabelece multas de que variam de 0,1% a 20% do faturamento bruto da empresa processada, nunca abaixo da vantagem obtida, caso esta seja auferida. Se não for possível levantar essa cifra, a previsão é de aplicação de multa variável entre 6.000 reais e 60 milhões de reais. E no limite, instaura a figura da “pena de morte” da pessoa jurídica, ou seja, estabelece a possibilidade de dissolver uma empresa envolvida em delitos. “É uma lei extremamente pertinente ”, celebra Leo Bottini, da Amarribo, organização sem fins lucrativos de combate à corrupção.

Mais do que isso, passa a punir os agentes da cadeia de valor de uma companhia. Se algum fornecedor estiver envolvido em ações nebulosas, a sua contratante é alvo da lei. Assim, a atuação de consultorias, despachantes, ou empresas fictícias criadas com o único fim de obter vantagens financeiras torna-se evidência objetiva, passível de pena severa. Esse aspecto da nova lei é elogiado pelo promotor Marcelo Mendroni, do Grupo de Atuação Especial de Repressão à Formação de Cartel e à Lavagem de Dinheiro e de Recuperação de Ativos (Gedec), do Ministério Público de São Paulo. “A lei vem preencher uma lacuna importante. As empresas fictícias são o meio mais utilizado para a lavagem de dinheiro no Brasil”, diz o promotor, que cuida do caso de formação de cartel de empresas fornecedoras de material para o metrô de São Paulo, que inclui as multinacionais Siemens e Alstom.

O cartel do metrô no Estado paulista foi denunciado, em delação premiada, pela própria Siemens no ano passado, revelando supostos subornos a agentes públicos, e também a atuação de empresas prestadoras de serviço que faziam a ponte entre a multinacional e funcionários públicos. Também em São Paulo, está em curso uma investigação, levantada pela Corregedoria Municipal, sobre a atuação de 30 construtoras suspeitas de terem pago 29 milhões de reais em propinas para auditores fiscais da Prefeitura de São Paulo, em troca de um desconto de 50% no valor total de um imposto municipal.

Para José Ricardo Roriz Coelho, diretor do Departamento de Competitividade e Tecnologia da a corrupção afeta negativamente a atividade econômica e a competitividade do país como um todo. “Ela aumenta o custo do investimento produtivo, prejudica a estabilidade do ambiente de negócios, inibe os investimentos externos, diminui a arrecadação e altera a composição dos gastos governamentais, além de distorcer a concorrência, e abalar a confiança no Estado”, afirma. O estudo da Fiesp aponta que, no mínimo, a corrupção equivale a 7,6% do investimento produtivo na economia, ou  a 22,6% do gasto público em educação nas três esferas.

A nova legislação já movimenta o mundo corporativo brasileiro, que vai procurar se adaptar às novas exigências. Para Pablo Cesário, gerente-executivo da Confederação Nacional da Indústria, as empresas, a partir de agora, devem adotar programas de combate à corrupção. Mas, Cesário chama a atenção para um fato importante para onde a legislação precisa avançar. “Compete ao Estado proteger empresas que denunciem atos de corrupção praticados por agentes públicos, prevenindo eventuais retaliações”, diz Cesário. Ou seja, as empresas devem ter espaço para denunciar um gestor público que venha a solicitar dinheiro em troca de alguma autorização ou licença que compete ao poder público liberar para a companhia.

No Brasil, várias empresas que tentaram denunciar achaques de funcionários públicos, inclusive na mídia, passaram a ser “perseguidas” por fiscalizações exageradas. Além disso, a falta de punição frustrava empresários, que preferiam aceitar o pedido de suborno a atrasar projetos em andamento por falta de algum documento. Uma pesquisa sobre corrupção revela que só 50% das empresas no país acreditam que denunciar pedidos de propina de funcionários públicos surtem efetivamente efeito.

O promotor Marcelo Mendroni também sublinha a necessidade de fortalecer o próprio corpo da Justiça e o treinamento de seus funcionários lei para que ela possa ser aplicada. “As três engrenagens precisam funcionar juntas: legislação, estrutura e treinamento”, diz. Cabe também à sociedade o papel de cobrar a sua execuação, avalia o cientista político Wagner Pralon. “Muitas vezes a vontade popular coloca alguns itens, como este, na pauta, mas é preciso manter a antenas ligadas”, afirma. Em outras palavras, a nova lei anticorrupção é um passo muito importante, mas é só o começo de um caminho longo pela frente.

Después de Snowden, ¿cuán vulnerable es internet?

Adam Blenford y Christine Jeavans

BBC

 Martes, 28 de enero de 2014

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Internet fue diseñada para ser libre y abierta. Ocho meses después de las primeras filtraciones de Edward Snowden, ¿sigue siendo el caso?

Los pioneros de la tecnología que diseñaron los protocolos originales del sistema vieron su creación como una manera de compartir información libremente a través de una red de redes.

No se trata simplemente de que exploten las actualizaciones de las redes sociales y la información que ya damos a las empresas. Las agencias de inteligencia supuestamente han aprovechado la estructura misma de internet.Sin embargo, las filtraciones de Edward Snowden de documentos clasificados de la Agencia Nacional de Seguridad de Estados Unidos (NSA por sus siglas en inglés) revelaron que espías estadounidenses y sus homólogos británicos usan esa misma internet para recoger grandes cantidades de información del rastro digital que dejamos todos los días.

Al igual que el universo a raíz del Big Bang, internet se está expandiendo. Desde sus humildes inicios como un proyecto dentro del Departamento de Defensa de EE.UU., la red ha crecido con cada avance tecnológico.

Este crecimiento ha requerido una infraestructura física cada vez mayor de routers, cables, centros de datos y otros componentes del hardware. Entre 1994 y 2013 se multiplicaron varias veces más.

Los gigantes de la red son las empresas y organizaciones que ofrecen la denominada red troncal de internet, que transfiere datos a través de cables de fibra óptica de alta capacidad.

Esta red, confeccionado con datos del mapa de internet de Peer 1, muestra la conexión relativa de las organizaciones en línea. Los mayores blobs (objetos binarios grandes) -aquellos con el mayor número de conexiones- son las empresas centrales, que superan la talla de Google y Amazon.

¿Cómo se transfieren los datos?

Casi todo lo que hacemos en línea pasa a través de una conexión troncal.

Si, por ejemplo, un estudiante envía desde Londres un correo electrónico a un amigo en Brasil, el mensaje saltará por toda la red y, a menudo, viajará a través de una conexión troncal como Level 3 Communications en EE.UU., que se describe como "proveedor de redes para gran parte de la infraestructura de comunicaciones del mundo".

Así que si se interceptaran los cables de las empresas como Level 3, los organismos de seguridad tendrían acceso a una enorme cantidad de tráfico mundial de internet.

En noviembre de 2013, el diario The New York Times informó que la NSA podría haber accedido a Google y a Yahoo a través de cables de Level 3.

En un comunicado, la empresa dijo a la BBC: "Cumplimos con las leyes aplicables en cada uno de los países donde operamos. En muchos casos, las leyes nos prohíben revelar detalles relacionados con ese cumplimiento de nuestra parte y convierten en delito la discusión de cualquier acceso a la información.

"Algunos medios de comunicación han especulado incorrectamente que tenemos acuerdos con gobiernos, según los cuales proporcionamos voluntariamente acceso a datos de la red, incluso cuando no estamos obligados a hacerlo. Eso es incorrecto. La privacidad del cliente es primordial para nuestro negocio. No permitimos el acceso no autorizado a nuestra red por cualquier entidad y nuestra red seguirá funcionando para proteger y asegurar la información de nuestros clientes, mientras nos adherimos a las leyes que se aplican a Level 3, así como a los demás proveedores de telecomunicaciones".

Los documentos de Snowden publicados en el diario británico The Guardian en junio pasado indican que los programas de espionaje de EE.UU. y Reino Unido destinados al "dominio de internet" incluyen aprovechar los cables submarinos a través de los cuales fluyen datos y llamadas telefónicas.

Los documentos sostienen que uno de los servicios de inteligencia británicos, el GCHQ, fue capaz de monitorear hasta 600 millones de comunicaciones diarias. La información que describe el uso telefónico y de internet fue supuestamente almacenada durante unos 30 días, para ser examinada y analizada.

GCHQ se negó a comentar sobre las afirmaciones, aunque indicó que cumplió "escrupulosamente" con la ley.

El futuro

La magnitud de la recopilación de datos de la NSA es difícil de comprender. Y las opiniones sobre su legitimidad están divididas: algunos creen que es un baluarte fundamental contra los ataques terroristas, mientras que otros insisten en que los programas son violaciones peligrosas de las libertades civiles.

Las revelaciones de Snowden han sido motivo de manifestaciones en varios países.

Las revelaciones de Snowden podrían llevar a un cambio en el modo en que los gobiernos y las grandes organizaciones utilizan internet.

Se ha hablado de una "división" en internet, de modo que, por ejemplo, las comunicaciones que se inician y terminan en Europa sólo viajan por cables europeos.

"La información es poder y es dinero", señaló a la BBC el experto en seguridad Bruce Schneier, quien analizó los documentos de Snowden para el periodista Glenn Greenwald.

"Estas discusiones acerca de quién tiene el control de los datos son más grandes que la NSA y que la vigilancia, y son las cuestiones clave de la era de la información".

Pero los expertos en tecnología dicen que esto haría que los negocios fueran más difíciles de realizarse en línea y podrían hacer que el acceso global fácil al que nos hemos acostumbrado se convierta en algo del pasado.

"No creo que sepamos en lo que se va a transformar internet a causa de esto", sentenció Schneier.