Title (for now): Chilean schools: are these sites of resistance against neoliberal educational

policies?

General Aims

 To analyse the ways that some Chilean public schools become sites of resistance
against neoliberal educational policies
 To discover the kind of pedagogy that Chilean teachers apply in public schools and
identify if there are links between this pedagogy and the student mobilisations
 To understand the aspects within a Chilean public school that make possible
students’ and teachers’ radicalisation/ politicization

Research Questions

Overarching question: How and why do some Chilean public schools become sites of
resistance against neoliberal educational policies?

 What kind of pedagogy do teachers apply in Chilean public schools and how is this
realised?
 What is there in a Chilean school to make politicization/radicalisation possible?
 What are the political links between Chilean teachers’ critical pedagogy and the
student mobilisations?

Methodology

 Ethnographic research
 Emblematic schools: Instituto Nacional boys school / Carmela Carvajal de Prat girls
school.
 Coeducational schools: Liceo 7 José Toribio Medina / Augusto D’Halmar
 Participants (History teachers / Philosophy teachers / students in 10th and 12th
grades)
 Focus groups (students)
 Interviews (teachers)
 Class observations
 After class conversations (teachers)
 Centro de Alumnos (Students’ Union) meetings observations

Socio-Historical context

In 1973, after the Military Coup led by Augusto Pinochet, most of the decisions regarding
education were made by the ‘Junta Militar’, which was the central government at that time
(Rector, 2003; Torche, 2005). The decisions regarding education related to educational
funding, teachers’ pedagogy and national curriculum, among others (Carnoy, 1998; Holt,
2008). After the 1980s economic crisis, educational reforms were implemented with the
aim of supporting the market-orientated system that the neoliberal government was
determined to carry out (Torche, 2005; Matear, 2006).

The first reform was the privatisation of education in 1981. This one included fully
subsidized and deregulated private schools competing for students with deregulated
municipality-run public schools. This way, the government allowed private investors to
enter the market as suppliers of publicly financed education.

The second reform implemented in the 1980s had to do with decentralising Education. This
reform left schools in charge of municipalities, reducing the role of the government to
overseeing national education programmes. This authoritarian regime embraced the
minimum role for the state in education and relied mainly on market mechanisms for
educational expansion (Simola et al., 2013). Subsequently, after the economic crisis in the
1980s, education funding decreased 18% in relation to previous years, so municipalities had
to cover the rest. This way, the relationship between quality education and the budget that
municipalities have for it was established. Consequently, as a result of the role being
transferred to the municipalities, the inequality within the education system improved.
Therefore, wealthier municipalities had more opportunities to invest in education than
poorer ones, which have faced ongoing issues within their budgets to this day. As a result,
the dictatorship succeeded in installing neoliberal policies to stimulate market forces by
making schools behave like businesses, through giving them greater autonomy and
encouraging parents to be like customers.

Furthermore, after these reforms were implemented, deprived students were naturally
allocated in poorer municipal schools and have performed poorly in national evaluations
compared to their peers in richer municipalities (Cox, 2010). Besides, the segregation
among Chilean students according to their socioeconomic background started to
dramatically increase by 2000. This was against the values of equity and integration in
educational policies that the ‘Concertación’’ (centre-leftist alliance of parties created to
defeat Pinochet’s military regime) in their governments from 1990-2010 were developing.
Truly, the segregation caused by decentralising and privatising education in the 1980s
increased education inequity across social classes, questioning the quality education that
students received and becoming teachers as content deliverers instead of knowledge
builders.

For all the reasons mentioned before, Chile has been considered to have the most
segregated educational systems among the countries that belong to the Organization for
Economy Cooperation and Development – OECD. For this reason, in 2006 and 2011,
student strikes along with the Teachers’ Union and other social movements demanded that
the government respect and protect Chilean public education and ensure its quality, gratuity
and equity across social classes and eliminate standardised tests and unfair selection
systems.

Within this context, two municipal schools have managed to face the neoliberal system in
the country and have defeated the municipal schools' stereotypes: Instituto Nacional de
Chile and Carmela Carvajal de Prat. Both institutions have outperformed in SIMCE and
PSU (University Selection Test) but at the same time the students who attend these schools
have led social movements in the last 14 years. Instituto Nacional school was created in
1813 and has carried academic prestige to these days. Carmela Carvajal de Prat is known to
be the best school for girls in Chile and is among the top 20 best public schools. However,
not only have these schools achieved academic prestige and value but also have they been
at the centre of social movements. Teachers and students in these schools are known for
being politically active and natural leaders.
 
So I am deeply interested in understanding how these schools are resisting neoliberalism.
Nevertheless, I am also interested in researching other schools, which are not emblematic
schools but are either good at ‘academic performance’ or ‘bastions against neoliberal
educational policies’. Thus, I will attempt to figure out the way these schools work, how
teachers deliver their lessons, the type of pedagogy teachers use, what is the influence
teachers have over students’ leadership and social contribution to the country, and how
teachers have managed to promote and improve students’ class consciousness in order to
help them become critical thinkers contrary to what the Ministry of Education and the
government recommend (if so).

Concepts:

Emblematic School: a small number of public schools that confront the strong stigma held
by most public schools; these are authentic fortresses of academic excellence and social
prestige (Quaresma, 2017)

Further explanation needed:

 Student protest 2006 ‘the Penguins Movement’

References:

Carnoy, M. (1998). National Voucher Plans in Chile and Sweden: Did Privatization
Reforms Make for Better Education? Comparative Education Review, 42(3), 309.
http://doi.org/10.1086/447510

Cox, C. (2010). Política y políticas educacionales en chile 1990-2010. Revista Uruguaya de

Holt, T. (2008). Washington Report on The Hemisphere. Retrieved March 12, 2016, from
www.coha.org
Matear, A. (2006). Barriers to Equitable Access: Higher Education Policy and Practice in
Chile Since 1990. Higher Education Policy, 19(1), 31–49.
http://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.hep.8300114

Quaresma, M. L. (2017). Excellence in High-Performing Public Schools in Chile: Students’

Rector, J (2003). The History of Chile. United States: Palgrave Macmillan.

Simola, H., Rinne, R., Varjo, J., & Kauko, J. (2013). The paradox of the education race:
how to win the ranking game by sailing to headwind. JOURNAL OF EDUCATION
POLICY, 28: 5, pp. 612–633. http://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2012.758832

Torche, F. (2005). Privatization reform and inequality of educational opportunity: The case
of Chile. Sociology of Education, 78(4), 316–343.
http://doi.org/10.1177/003804070507800403