On September 11, 1973, Augusto Pinochet led a coup over democratically-elected Chilean President Salvador Allende, which brought in 17 years of military dictatorship in Chile. Pinochet’s dictatorship imposed neoliberalism on the country starting in the 1980s, under the direction of Milton Friedman, who mentored many prominent Chilean economists at the University of Chicago in the 1970s. Neoliberal policies in Chile in the 1980s matched a world trend, as the Reagan and Thatcher administrations promoted neoliberalism through their support of the World Bank’s and IMF’s guidelines.
Education in Chile was not immune from Friedman’s neoliberalism. Under Pinochet, Chile’s system of universal, free, public education was eradicated in order to make room for private enterprise. Chile enacted freedom of education in 1872 with the creation of its national education system. Pinochet’s Directiva Presidential sobre la Educacion Nacional (Presidential Directive on National Education) from March 5th, 1979 redefined secondary and higher education on non-essential matters of individual choice. Pinochet saw the keys to improving the Chilean education system as being competitiveness, privatization, and ‘freedom’ of education. This explicit commodification of education was implemented through a voucher system and the expansion of private schools at all levels. More and more schools popped up (1,800 primary schools in 1979, 2,300 in 1982; 8 universities in 1980, 310 in 1990) under Pinochet’s pretext of expanding the coverage of Chilean schools, leading not to an increase in quality of education, rather creating the conditions for the proliferation of for-profit educational institutions.
25 years after the return to democracy in Chile, Chile’s education system is still dealing with the consequences of Pinochet’s reconstruction of national education. Chilean schools are considered to be the most expensive in the world, relative to per capita income. Since 2006, Chilean students at the high school and university levels have protested Pinochet’s lasting neoliberal education system and its effects:
“The Chilean [university] system is a very low educational quality and even more, is very expensive. [The university system] generates even more inequality than the inequality of the [elementary school] system, when private schools have a much higher quality than public schools.”
That was Jorge Gatica Navarro, a 23 year-old Chilean friend of mine. He studied engineering at Diego Portales University in Santiago, a private university that boasts a ‘liberal arts’ curriculum. He spoke to me about his experience during the ‘Penguin Revolution’ in 2006, saying this was when the conversation opened up about “profit in education and how this idea of ‘market education’, to say education as a business, was a negative incentive for the [educational] quality”.
While the ideas about education as a business emerged out of the 2006 protests, it is clear that the Chilean education system functioned as a business from the time Pinochet implemented a voucher system in 1980, and not in the sense that educational competition would yield increased quality. Instead, Chilean primary schools sought out the most high-achieving students that were the cheapest to teach and who could pay the most. Previous public school funding was diverted to these schools that attracted the most students and left public schools with slashed budgets to educate students of the lowest classes. The voucher system created an intense social stratification, which some have even called Chile’s educational apartheid. Jorge calls this a “vicious cycle”, as the students who are able to afford private primary and secondary education continue on to the country’s best universities while students from lower classes “study ‘majors’ that do not permit them to develop or do not have workplaces, or in the end they graduate with university debts and they are only able to work to pay their debts; in a sense the educational system only reproduces the inequalities of the system” (emphasis my own).
On May 3, 2006, 790,000 Chilean high school students protested throughout the country, and during the 2011 wave of University protests, approval rating of the protestors peaked at 81%. Perhaps this widespread participation and support indicates that Chileans are rejecting the neoliberal foundation of their education system. Jorge informed me that the protests are a “result of the authorities who have not been able to realize the students’ demands”. Michelle Bachelet won her second presidential race with the campaign of education reform and earlier this year signed into law reform that will gradually ban profits, tuition fees, and selective admissions practices in privately-owned primary and secondary schools that receive state subsidies, among other reforms. This law hopes to change education from a consumer good to a social right (Chilean education was a social right starting in 1872). Chile also passed a corporate tax increase that will raise $8 billion every year to fund these educational policy changes. Bachelet has promised legislation this year that would deal with teacher salaries, quality of schools, and has even guaranteed free university education by 2020.
I think we can look to the Chilean example for a few lessons. First and foremost, the United States is responsible for exporting the system of neoliberal education to Chile under Pinochet. To me this seems crucial to remember as we look at what is happening today in Chile with optimism. The U.S. is in part responsible for the incredibly harmful effects of neoliberal educational policy in Chile, which student protestors are working to remedy. Chile continually ranks highest in terms of cost of education per capita income and also ranks 119th out of 144 countries in terms of quality of education. I don’t think anyone is too proud of this. To many, this disparity between cost and quality indicates the failure of the neoliberal educational model. Chileans are now turning to the idea that improved quality of education will be reached via free education, an idea that the gatekeepers and decision-makers of U.S. universities aren’t privy to. Another thing that excites me about the situation in Chile is the normalized and almost-universal condemnation of the educational as business model. An 81% approval rating in a highly polarized society such as post-dictatorship Chile seems unbelievable to me. To see students of all backgrounds with support of Chilenxs from all sectors of society uniting behind the slogan “¡No al lucro!” (No to Profit!) is incredibly progressive from the U.S. perspective. But with support from a majority of the country, Chileans are saying that this isn’t a progressive ideology, rather common sense. Chileans are delegitimizing the neoliberal educational practices in their country by normalizing how they talk about them. Lastly, the protests in Chile have yielded legislative change. It is too soon to tell the effect of the new laws, and it’s unclear how easy it will be to undo the consequences of neoliberal educational policy, but the protesters have the attention of their government and the world. Chile is obviously a much smaller country than the United States, but its students have shown that change is possible.
Education in Chile was not immune from Friedman’s neoliberalism. Under Pinochet, Chile’s system of universal, free, public education was eradicated in order to make room for private enterprise. Chile enacted freedom of education in 1872 with the creation of its national education system. Pinochet’s Directiva Presidential sobre la Educacion Nacional (Presidential Directive on National Education) from March 5th, 1979 redefined secondary and higher education on non-essential matters of individual choice. Pinochet saw the keys to improving the Chilean education system as being competitiveness, privatization, and ‘freedom’ of education. This explicit commodification of education was implemented through a voucher system and the expansion of private schools at all levels. More and more schools popped up (1,800 primary schools in 1979, 2,300 in 1982; 8 universities in 1980, 310 in 1990) under Pinochet’s pretext of expanding the coverage of Chilean schools, leading not to an increase in quality of education, rather creating the conditions for the proliferation of for-profit educational institutions.
25 years after the return to democracy in Chile, Chile’s education system is still dealing with the consequences of Pinochet’s reconstruction of national education. Chilean schools are considered to be the most expensive in the world, relative to per capita income. Since 2006, Chilean students at the high school and university levels have protested Pinochet’s lasting neoliberal education system and its effects:
“The Chilean [university] system is a very low educational quality and even more, is very expensive. [The university system] generates even more inequality than the inequality of the [elementary school] system, when private schools have a much higher quality than public schools.”
That was Jorge Gatica Navarro, a 23 year-old Chilean friend of mine. He studied engineering at Diego Portales University in Santiago, a private university that boasts a ‘liberal arts’ curriculum. He spoke to me about his experience during the ‘Penguin Revolution’ in 2006, saying this was when the conversation opened up about “profit in education and how this idea of ‘market education’, to say education as a business, was a negative incentive for the [educational] quality”.
While the ideas about education as a business emerged out of the 2006 protests, it is clear that the Chilean education system functioned as a business from the time Pinochet implemented a voucher system in 1980, and not in the sense that educational competition would yield increased quality. Instead, Chilean primary schools sought out the most high-achieving students that were the cheapest to teach and who could pay the most. Previous public school funding was diverted to these schools that attracted the most students and left public schools with slashed budgets to educate students of the lowest classes. The voucher system created an intense social stratification, which some have even called Chile’s educational apartheid. Jorge calls this a “vicious cycle”, as the students who are able to afford private primary and secondary education continue on to the country’s best universities while students from lower classes “study ‘majors’ that do not permit them to develop or do not have workplaces, or in the end they graduate with university debts and they are only able to work to pay their debts; in a sense the educational system only reproduces the inequalities of the system” (emphasis my own).
On May 3, 2006, 790,000 Chilean high school students protested throughout the country, and during the 2011 wave of University protests, approval rating of the protestors peaked at 81%. Perhaps this widespread participation and support indicates that Chileans are rejecting the neoliberal foundation of their education system. Jorge informed me that the protests are a “result of the authorities who have not been able to realize the students’ demands”. Michelle Bachelet won her second presidential race with the campaign of education reform and earlier this year signed into law reform that will gradually ban profits, tuition fees, and selective admissions practices in privately-owned primary and secondary schools that receive state subsidies, among other reforms. This law hopes to change education from a consumer good to a social right (Chilean education was a social right starting in 1872). Chile also passed a corporate tax increase that will raise $8 billion every year to fund these educational policy changes. Bachelet has promised legislation this year that would deal with teacher salaries, quality of schools, and has even guaranteed free university education by 2020.
I think we can look to the Chilean example for a few lessons. First and foremost, the United States is responsible for exporting the system of neoliberal education to Chile under Pinochet. To me this seems crucial to remember as we look at what is happening today in Chile with optimism. The U.S. is in part responsible for the incredibly harmful effects of neoliberal educational policy in Chile, which student protestors are working to remedy. Chile continually ranks highest in terms of cost of education per capita income and also ranks 119th out of 144 countries in terms of quality of education. I don’t think anyone is too proud of this. To many, this disparity between cost and quality indicates the failure of the neoliberal educational model. Chileans are now turning to the idea that improved quality of education will be reached via free education, an idea that the gatekeepers and decision-makers of U.S. universities aren’t privy to. Another thing that excites me about the situation in Chile is the normalized and almost-universal condemnation of the educational as business model. An 81% approval rating in a highly polarized society such as post-dictatorship Chile seems unbelievable to me. To see students of all backgrounds with support of Chilenxs from all sectors of society uniting behind the slogan “¡No al lucro!” (No to Profit!) is incredibly progressive from the U.S. perspective. But with support from a majority of the country, Chileans are saying that this isn’t a progressive ideology, rather common sense. Chileans are delegitimizing the neoliberal educational practices in their country by normalizing how they talk about them. Lastly, the protests in Chile have yielded legislative change. It is too soon to tell the effect of the new laws, and it’s unclear how easy it will be to undo the consequences of neoliberal educational policy, but the protesters have the attention of their government and the world. Chile is obviously a much smaller country than the United States, but its students have shown that change is possible.