A friend of many years, the doctor Dráuzio Varella, spoke to the Estadão about his partnership with the doctor João Carlos Di Genio, who died this Saturday, 11, victim of a heart attack at the age of 82, and with whom he created the Objetive course.
How did you and Di Genio create Objective?
The two of us started teaching together in a small class called Nove de Julho. I was 22 and Di Genio was 25. He taught Physics and I taught Chemistry. When I was in the fourth year of medical school and he had just graduated. One day, having dinner, we had the idea of taking a vacation course. He said it was his idea. I think it was mine. As we had no witnesses, it remained the same.
The Goal started like this: the two of us together and other colleagues we called to teach. We chose the name and published an ad in Jornal da Tarde in 1966. He embraced it with incredible strength. It became the reason for his life. I didn’t want to know about medicine anymore. He practically had no personal life. His life was work. He only spoke in the course. One day we talked and I said I didn’t want to continue. I wanted to be a doctor.
What was the importance of Di Genio for Brazilian education?
Di Genio is of great importance. The cram schools were very traditional. The teachers dictated the material and the students copied it. Objective innovated. Right away, he started making handouts and distributing them for free. We started to attract the good teachers from the other courses. Nobody refused to go because we paid double. It was an absurd success. It became a monopoly, practically, among the preparatory courses of medicine. We reached 10,000 students. He and all of us taught the same class 25 times a week. When they say that I have a knack for communication, I say that what I had was training. No actor does a play 25 times a week.
He did very important things. He was the first to put television in the classroom in the early 70’s. He was able to understand, at a very early stage, that there would not be a public university for everyone. It’s impossible. The State would not be able to open other USP and Unesp. He realized that there was a large market of students who did not have access to public colleges.
It opted for a niche market for people who could not afford to pay much. Sometimes people criticized. They said that teaching was massified, but how many people went there? If these people had not attended Unip, would they have attended better universities? What came next in the private sector? Low level colleges.
Has it expanded access to education?
No doubt. Di Genio greatly expanded access, at a time when this was not in fashion. This was spreading across Brazil. Unip became the largest private college in the country. He did this job wonderfully well. He understood how distance learning could be done.
Did you still have a close relationship?
We were very connected. It’s a teenage friendship, but I didn’t have anything to do with Unip anymore. Except when I proposed to him the research project I am developing in the Amazon. He agreed to sponsor right away. He saw the potential in things.
Which of Di Genio’s qualities do you highlight?
He knew how to understand people. Di Genio knew how far he could go with each person. He had that ability. That was very helpful in his career.
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