A Chicagoan–Chilean Laboratory of Educational Policies: Rising and Social Resistance

• In Event: 26.021 - Community Resistance to School Closings: Defending Public Education in Chile and Chicago

Abstract

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the schools of economics of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC) and the University of Chicago (U of C) signed in 1956 an agreement to improve the science of economics in Chile. This agreement, called ‘Project Chile’, trained Chileans economists until 1964, in a context of great political polarization (Salazar & Pinto, 1999; Silva, 1991; Valdes 1995). In that moment, Santiago was one of the most important centers of production of economic ideas in Latin America, seduced mainly by the Keynesianism and Structuralism currents. The ‘Chicago Boys’ – the Chilean alumni of U of C-PUC’s agreement- were transformed not just in a conservative force in the PUC, but in human resources to disseminate the neoliberal frame in Latin America. The coup d’état of 1973 meant a great opportunity to begin the first laboratory of neoliberal policies in the world. A core of economists PUC-U of C took the main positions during the dictatorship (1973-1990). From 1980, this perspective began to be dominant in the educational sector, installing policies such as: voucher system, decentralization and introduction of charter schools, high stakes standard tests, and anti-union strategies. The articulation of all of those elements did not be broken by the new democratic government in 1990.
The aim of this study is to explore the fractures of the Chilean educational neoliberal model between 1990 and 2014, highlighting the social movements of resistance. My theoretical perspective considers contributions of different theories and concepts.
The field (Bourdieu, 2010) or arena (Oszlak & O’Donnell, 1995) of policymaking is a social space of tensions and conflicts, depending of the positions and capital of diverse actors. During the dictatorship, the knowledge (as discourse and technology) of the neoliberal policies became hegemonic. Just three decades later, the social movements started a deepen process of deconstruction of meanings of this neoliberal narrative (Foucault, 1994, 1995). In this perspective, Chile presents today an emergence of a new scenario of policymaking, where the educational policies are in the center of negotiations and new rules are taking place (Barroso, 2006).
This qualitative research focus in the study of three cases: the Revolution of Pinguins (2006), College’s Student Movement (2011-2014) and Alto al SIMCE Campaign – movement against testing- (2013-2014). Those cases are chosen, because they represent different struggle strategies from social movements in education. They give us new understandings about mechanisms actives to keep the roots of neoliberalism untouchable. Our methodology allows identifying actors, relations and contexts, and roles, actions, motivations, discourses and resources. The main techniques used are interviewing, direct observation and collect of documentation (historical data, meeting records, press notes, scholar articles). This study is a contribution in understanding the complex relation between policies, politics and social movements in education, in a context of struggles against policies that became global.

Author

• Jorge Luis Inzunza, Delavan Darien School District