The author of several research works published in international magazines, he has an admirable easiness to get in depth without large explanations respective to complex situations. Education, research, an individual’s social role, corporate responsibility, arts and poetry. This and a little more is what we talked with the polemic, direct and multifaceted National Prize for Exact Sciences.
A Porteño, born in 1948, José Maza is an engineer from the University of Chile, institution where he began a career related to astronomy and, afterwards, he obtained a Master’s Degree and a PhD in Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, Canada. Back in our country, he was appointed Professor and he later became Director of the Department of Astronomy at the Faculty of Physical and Mathematic Sciences from “Bello’s Institution”.
The author of many research works published in international magazines, he was awarded the National Prize for Exact Sciences in 1999 for his contribution to the knowledge of the speed of the universe expansion and the determination of big-scale geometry of the universe, by using 1A-type supernovas as distance indicators. Currently his fields of research are supernovas, dark energy and robotic telescopes, with a proposed special emphasis in science dissemination among high school and undergraduate students.
The management of sustainability and human development requires gathering together, negotiating and sharing experiences around different subjects such as science, how has it changed in recent times?
People’s awareness, particularly among students, regarding to nature, ecology and science, has been getting stronger, which makes us more optimistic in relation to a future that’s not coming as badly as we had outlined 20 years ago.
Up to a few years ago, no one understood that throwing mining waste and trash into the sea was bad. It looked like an endless dump. Today we are conscious about protecting oceans, our atmosphere, and the soil and, little by little, we confirmed that science is present in the society and different activities; that’s why it’s relevant to know and understand what it is about.
Are our teaching methods, in your opinion, the most appropriate for our students to develop their skills?
Chile must invest more in education, attract more highly-skilled students to becoming teachers – something that hasn’t happened in the last 30 years, and have more and better schools. By the time we get better trained and motivated, with appropriate classrooms and less students inside one room, so then we might discuss methodological changes and incorporate ‘learning by doing’ because, if all previous isn’t done, it’ll be just a fantasy. The current analysis is that old teaching methods are not appropriate for contemporary teaching, but with the same classrooms and the same teachers, there’s no method that’s going to work.
How does this analysis suit four-year presidential terms?
The process is quite long and, whoever says he or she can do it in 3 or 4 years, they’re lying. The problem with education in Chile will be fixed within 25 to 30 years, and we must start by promoting pedagogies at universities in order to make them excellence careers once again, by attracting he best students, motivating them and also doing additional activities like ‘Ciencia sin Ficción’, and many other instances I’ve had the honour to be invited to in several cities in the country.
We need more interactive museums, libraries, places for culture and science encounters for students. This is missed in a serious way, especially in poor and vulnerable places. They require high-skilled teachers with big libraries, places where students can stay up to 9 or 10pm with a cup of milk and a piece of bread, because, when we have children lying on the pavement at their neighbourhood from 5pm, we are guiding this in a direction we don’t want it to continue happening.
“Children are the future,” it’s frequently said, but it’s us who are educating newer generations, therefore the responsibility for what might happen is ours…
In any tribe, youth are trained by the best, and that hasn’t happened in Chile in the last 40 years. So with that, we are wrong. What does a youngster want to do today? Studying medicine, engineering, architecture, law or any other renowned course, and if they don’t make it into those, well, they apply for pedagogy. That must change.
They are stigmatised careers for assuring your future, but that’s just considering economics, one of many aspects of personal and comprehensive development…
If you are young with skills for becoming an engineer, so dedicate to teaching mathematics because you’re talented, but who can we motivate for a monthly wage of 500.000 pesos? When the society starts paying teachers 2 million pesos per month, then we could tell the youth they have a reasonable future in teaching, they’re not going to live from the begging of others.
Today a high-skilled teacher starts earning 500.000 pesos, and after 30 years, he’ll end up earning 800.000 pesos, but if during this period he has children and family, how are they going to solve it? So no one can be that rude, because the only that matters to all of us in this society is earnings. The more I earn, the better the job is supposed to be. Today we must go convince the youth to dedicate into teaching, because it’s a ministry, a mission ‘with what legs!’
Besides, in this society, the only goal for companies is making profits, not creating jobs. Who told that companies have the national development in mind? During the last government all businesspeople fled to invest in Peru, Colombia or Ecuador, because there was no guarantee in here to what they asked us to bring. In the society we’re living in, everyone must seek how not to live exhausted, and if a teacher is going to earn the diminished wage he earns – and not a ‘so-called modest’ one of 3.7 million pesos, so let’s start by saying that teaching and education are something that society really cares about and let’s then put on what Americans say: “If your mouth gets there, put the money there,” but if you don’t do it, then shut your mouth.
Companies have incorporated technology to improve their processes but, how do we incorporate science into the industry?
The industry doesn’t incorporate science because it doesn’t need it for making money and, while this remains the same, it won’t do it. Now, if it replaces people with machines, it’s because that’s cheaper and it will increase the profits; it’s not about innovation, it’s because it’s cheaper.
When big companies compete side by side, they must have a research group – like Philips and Shell do, because they must create new ideas to compete best, but in here, no one is trying to create ideas because we’re not competing in the First World but in the Underworld: going to China to buy as cheap as possible in order to sell in Chile as high-priced as possible, and that requires no science. We need to make a big step towards real development.
If Chile firmly incorporates adding value to the things we are doing, there will come a time in which having thinking people might be crucial for a company to position itself with a comparative advantage, but in this country, companies don’t compete against each other, because they collude with each other. Why incorporating science if they divide the cities and the country in shares with captive markets, where the biggest company starts acquiring the smallest ones until it becomes the largest in the market.
Don’t we have the chance to do these changes now? Lithium will become our newest flagship product
I have faith in the future, but we need to make substantial changes. While the people don’t have a real voice in political decision making, this will remain a ballroom dance. Tell me one thing: How did they grant Ponce Lerou the licence for lithium mining? In order for him to have ‘monkeys’ extracting it with shovels and making money into his pockets. Why not making a decision whether to build lithium batteries, electric cars or other innovations? No, because he knows how to make money from ‘monkeys’ extracting lithium with shovels. But we also know what Soquimich did by funding electoral campaigns…
Can science become an expression of personal growth?
Science is fundamental, it’s part of the culture, part of the human being. I don’t imagine a life without music, pictures or sculptures. The beauty of nature and what may surround us, as is the architecture, they are part of the quality of life. Science is like the motor, the bow mask of this ship comprising quite a lot of things, like art, culture, beauty and poetry. A cute poem tells someone a lot more and warms the heart more than many lines about a building unit (UF, Spanish acronym for BU).