Hard Evidence on Soft Skills

EPGE held the "Hard Evidence on Soft Skills" lecture with Nobel laureate James Heckman on May 7. In his speech, Heckman demonstrated how non-cognitive capacities developed in childhood and adolescence are decisive in the labor market and in social life, and how such capacities can be measured in order to identify the stages of school life in which investments are to be made In these types of skills.

The event - coordinated by Professor Aloisio Araújo - also featured a round-table discussion with Education Minister Aloizio Mercadante and the municipal secretary of Education, Claudia Costin, on the current situation of early childhood education in Brazil and its consequences for education In general in the country. "Fundamental Education is the foundation that must sustain the system and enable the development of Brazil in areas where it has deficiency and which are essential, as in Exact and Biological Sciences," said the minister.

The FGV president, professor Carlos Ivan Simonsen Leal, the director of Academic Integration, professor Antonio Freitas, the director of EPGE, professor Rubens Penha Cysne, and the coordinator of the event, EPGE professor Aloisio Araújo, also participated in the event.

Economist and Nobel James Heckman was present at the FGV on two other occasions in 2009 and 2011 at seminars on early childhood education.