As corporate reformers demand a free-market system, where charters and vouchers are easily available, and schools compete for students, it is wise to take note of Chile. Chile is the one nation that implemented Chicago economist Milton Friedman’s ideas into its education system, at the behest of military dictator Pinochet.
This is a comment by a teacher who studied in Chile:
“I was studying abroad in Chile in 2011 during the second round of student protests. I was surprised by the low academic level of the somewhat prestigious university I was attending. At one point, I offered to collaborate with a group of students in my physics class. About half the class was repeating the course, and we were all struggling. I had been watching free MIT lectures online, which had helped me understand some of the content of the class. On the other hand, I was still struggling with the format of the class and was barely passing. I offered to explain some of the concepts in Spanish using the MIT videos, if they would help me to do better in class. No one took me up on my offer. In fact, they seemed confused by the proposal. One girl responded, “But we don’t have to understand physics, we just have to get the right answers on the test!”
“My semester was cut short by the country-wide “strike” of college students, and with nothing else to do and no way to know when classes might resume, I spent a lot of time marching and talking with students. I was teargassed by faceless policemen in swat outfits during a peaceful protest. I watched students defend themselves in the only way possible–by throwing rocks at the police force’s armored trucks. I ran from burning rubble in the streets, and crossed a picket line to take final exams so that I could leave the country with credits to take back to the US.
“But what frightened me most about the protests (and what frightens me now, now that I am going into my first year as a public school teacher) was the realization that the Chilean students did not even know how to fight for their educational rights. Many students’ education was so poor and so undemocratic that they could not form an effective civil rights movement. Over and over, I watched them make basic mistakes that caused them to be ignored or ridiculed by the government, media, and middle and upper class citizens. The protests eventually ended with no tangible improvements for the students. If the US eventually gets to the point that Chile is currently at, there may be no way to reverse it.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What were those “basic mistakes that caused them to be ignored or ridiculed by the government, media, and middle and upper class citizens”? I’d like to know, so we can avoid making those mistakes.
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There were two mistakes that concerned me the most and that, in my opinion, caused the protests to fail. The first was the lack of unity among students. They all wanted improved education, but they all had different ideas about how that should happen. Unfortunately, they waited until after they started the strike to meet together and agree on their method and goals. By the time they had agreed, weeks had passed and the movement had lost momentum.
The second major mistake was making huge, vague, impossible demands, and then settling for nothing less than the full fulfillment of those demands. When the various student unions and groups finally came to consensus on their demands, they turned out to be “free, quality university education for all.” With the current state of Chile’s constitution, legislature, and economy, that’s just not feasible. But they refused to return to class until that demand was met. If they had demanded something more short term and realistic, like a cap placed on the tuition universities can charge, or the requirement that the government meet a certain percent of students’ financial need, they might have achieved that. Then they could strike or otherwise move to demand more positive changes.
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Well this is a short term analysis, coming from a privileged and (neo)liberal standpoint. You are not being fair with the Chilean students, as well as you are not being fair to the social movements to which you are comparing them. Students are struggling for a different system, and that take time (more time that what it takes to search for the definition of revolution in Wikipedia or an MIT course). Moreover, this struggle did not start when you arrived to Chile; please take a look to the recent history of the country that you are criticizing. Take the time to explore what happened in Chile during the year 2006, then look for continuities between both massive movements and for the impact of these demonstrations in the construction of the common sense about education in the country. From 2006 to the date, the Students has been able to change the conversation and counter the hegemony of a neoliberal setup. Now things that seemed impossible four years ago are been discussed (such as the need for a new constitution). Chile is going forward to something new, maybe where we should have been before the foreign intervention that happened in the 70’s. This post is an example of neocolonial thinking, full of judgments and condescension. It is not only unfair, but also offensive.
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Thank you to Jav.
The “teacher in training”–I hope it wasn’t a TFA, which the reformers and Paul Vallas have brought to Chile–is incredibly naïve and unknowingly patronizing.
If a student in the US said, “but we don’t have to understand physics, or literature, or math, we just have to get the right answers on the tests”–he or she would be right! He or she would be a stellar student at an Arne-Duncan-&-Obama-approved charter school.
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It does not surprise me that Chilean students’ “education was so poor and undemocratic that they could not form an effective civil rights movement.” They are in their infancy as a democracy. In fact I strongly suspect that they were easily dismissed by ‘the government, media, and middle and uper-class citizens’ due to defects in their democracy, which cannot easily overcome a culture created by eons of a 2-tier society (land-holding aristocrats & peasants).
Although our own society has in the last 30+ yrs begin resembling Chile’s two tiers thanks to our government’s response to the challenges of globalism (i.e., unloosening the trammels on capitalism so that the top can skim the profits off a shrinking pie), I think we have resources–history & laws — that we can use to turn back the tide. Hopefully you will find a way to teach these essentials in your new post. Good luck!
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