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| Photograph: Juan Carlos Cardenas/EPA/Landov |
BBC News, Santiago
August 11, 2011
By Gideon Long
Chile is usually regarded as one of the most orderly and stable countries in South America, so the images that have come out of the capital, Santiago, in recent days have been especially shocking.
Thousands of high school and university students have marched through the capital's streets, as well as those of other major cities, demanding a radical overhaul of the education system.
Invariably the demonstrations have ended in violent clashes between masked youths and police officers armed with tear gas and water cannon.
The scenes have been reminiscent of the pro-democracy protests of the 1980s, when Chileans clashed with the forces of General Augusto Pinochet.
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On several occasions in August of 2011, thousands of Chilean students and citizens took to the streets to protest the nation's current education system. For such a "stable" Latin America country, the protests turned quickly violent as Chileans and police clashed ultimately ending in hundreds of arrests and injuries to citizens, policemen, and property. The backlash that the Chilean education system finally received has been masked by its relatively high educational standards in comparison to its Latin American neighbors. However, citizens believe that there are deeper inequalities being perpetuated by the education system. A large blame for these inequalities is placed on the structure of schools. The majority of schools in Chile are privately run, either tuition or voucher based, a much smaller percent are state-run institutions. The unavailability of financial resources amongst Chile's poor and lack of public education has, in the eyes of Chileans, given an unfair advantage to those wealthier citizens. Their call for an end to for profit education has been met by the Chilean government with skepticism and insistence that this demand cannot be met. With the government’s current plan to re-organize and their approval rate rapidly declining, they will have to confront this issue of “educational apartheid.”
Taking a closer look at this issue in Chile, one can see how the social oppressions occurring throughout society have transcended into a contentious problem. From a Neo-Marxist perspective, despite the economic growth that Chile has experienced in the last 10 years, Chilean citizens feel that that the education system has either stagnated or deteriorated during that same time span. When one considers that the increase in revenue could have been put to use to further improve the nation and address the social concerns of its public. Some analysts figure that Chile's embrace of a radical free market has caused this led to a general sense of unease despite the revitalizing affect that it has had on the economy. This makes one questions whether economic success and wealth can in reality lead to development in the face of such social oppressions.
Another point to be learned from this case study is the government's tactic to resolve this issue. Ministry leaders claim that the education system is indeed flawed, but insists that it is not a failure. They look to reorganize the system after successful European models that do have a fair distribution of private and publicly funded schools. However, the nations that they are looking towards as examples, the Netherlands and Belgium, do not have the underlying socio-economic inequalities that are present in Chilean society. My question to the Chilean government would be how do you plan on addressing the central issue, the socio-economic gap, if the model you are recreating does not have and did not address such an issue? Especially since your attempt to model other country's economies has not helped your overall nation's situation. Clearly this social unrest is speaking to larger volumes of underlying issues present in society and something is going to eventually give.
Oh the BBC, they thought these riots in Chile were "shocking"? More like predictable. In 2009-2010 I lived and worked in Chile on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship and I taught English at a public institution in Southern Chile. Over the course of the year, we had riot after riot. At one point, they went on strike for over two months consecutively. I was at a branch campus of larger institution (where the English department was housed) and the facilities reflected that. The lines between public, private, semi-private institutions in Chile is quite apparent.
ReplyDeleteEven talk of the rising costs of tuition sent my students in protest. Within Chile the strife definitely isn't hidden. At the end of your post you ask the right questions, how does the Chilean government expect to address education using non-applicable external models? Going on a privatization spree did help Chile become the "orderly, stable" nation we see today, but is that the answer for education? The social inequality present in Chile definitely isn't on the same scale as other Latin American countries, but it still needs to be addresses especially in terms of education.