The Fight to Make Education a Guaranteed Right: Chilean Students vs. the Nation’s President
After approximately three months of school takeovers, strikes, and nationwide marches throughout Chile, the unflagging persistence of demonstrators may prove decisive in the ongoing fight against unjust education standards that has taken the nation and its administrative cadres by storm. Years of extreme discontent with the Chilean education system have driven students and teachers alike to demand national education reform that would ultimately ensure a quality, affordable education for all. The latest demonstration took place in the nation’s capital on August 21 and involved over 500,000 protesters, contributing to the mounting political pressure on the Piñera administration. Braving the police force’s water cannons, tear gas, and anti-riot gear, hundreds of thousands of students, teachers, and sympathizers are stomping throughout Santiago and other cities, applying pressure on the Chilean government to respond to their demands.
History Lamentably Begins to Repeat Itself
The Chilean school system has been subject to acrid criticism and student protest since the initial decentralization and partial privatization of primary and secondary schools in 1981. Under the harsh dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, funding for university level education dramatically decreased. Accordingly, universities were obligated to counter the shortage of funds with higher tuition fees. The dictatorship adhered to the neoliberal belief that students should essentially “pay for the private returns they got from their investment in higher education” and the perception that universities would become a perilous political threat to Pinochet and his regime.In conjunction with the establishment of for-profit, private universities, the lack of comprehensive reforms for university level education following Pinochet’s regime has divided prospective students on the basis of personal wealth, creating a sharp disparity in the quality of education a student receives from private versus public schools.
This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate PoLin So.
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