Here's the outcome:
Policy Futures in EducationVolume 10 Number 2 2012www.wwwords.co.uk/PFIE
219
Neoliberal Education and Student Movements in Chile: Inequalities and Malaise
Neoliberal Education and StudentMovements in Chile: inequalities and malaise
CRISTIAN CABALIN
Instituto de la Comunicación e Imagen,University of Chile
ABSTRACT This article examines the major consequences of the neoliberal education systemimplemented in Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and how two important studentmovements contested this structure. In 2006 and 2011, thousands of students filled the streets todemand better public education, more social justice and equal opportunities. They rejected the free-market fundamentalism in education that has generated segregation, stratification and inequalities.Students have become important political actors who re-evaluated the discussion on education inChile. By doing so, they are rejecting the competitive and privatized nature of the current system,which is lacking in quality and equity, and they are demonstrating that new ‘social imaginary’ inChilean education is possible.
Introduction
Thousands of Chilean secondary and university students filled the streets of the nation for sevenmonths in 2011. They were marching to demand changes in the educational system that has beenunable to reduce the social and economic differences between poor and rich students. Five yearsearlier, in 2006, another student movement, known as the ‘Penguin Revolution’, foreshadowedthese protests and was the first major Chilean educational movement since the return of democracy in 1990 (Domedel & Peña y Lillo, 2008). Secondary students, nicknamed ‘penguins’ because of their black-and-white school uniforms, were in the streets demanding better publiceducation and more social justice in education.Both student movements shook the elitist Chilean democracy, characterized by low socialparticipation and the exclusion of citizens from the political system (de la Maza, 2010). Yet, themost important outcome of these movements was to generate a public and general criticismtowards neoliberal educational policies implemented in Chile (Anderson, 2011). These policiespromote the continued privatization of the education sector, which values the right of schoolchoice over the right to an equitable education, and also presents education as a commodity, whereschools are presented as a product to buy and sell. Due to this, students have made these factors themajor focus of their protests in hopes of steering away from neoliberal practices. The studentmovements surprised Chile, which is considered one of the most stable countries in Latin Americawith a sustained economic growth in the last decades (Ffrench-Davis, 2002). This economicadvancement, however, has been overshadowed by profound social inequalities produced by theneoliberal project. Chile has one of the most unequal income distributions in the world, with a Ginicoefficient at 0.54 (Sehnbruch & Donoso, 2011).Chile was the first neoliberal experiment in the world (Harvey, 2007). The dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) imposed neoliberalism during the 1980s, following therecommendations of Milton Friedman, who was a mentor of an array of Chilean economists
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