Curriculum Conversations Around the New Constitution: Calling Into Question the Neoliberal Subject?

• In Event: The Constitution as Curriculum and Public Pedagogy

Abstract

Chile is one of the “cribs” of neoliberalism. The existing constitution, approved during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in 1980, has been instrumental in supporting the advance of market logic in all sectors of societies, including education. Worldwide, the advance of economic globalization and the neoliberal agenda of the last 40 years has reinforced the value of education in terms of economic returns, contributing to reproduce what some scholars call “neoliberal subjectivities” (Araujo, 2017). In Chile, empirical research shows that ways of being, knowing and doing have naturalized a high degree of competitiveness, individualism, exhaustion, and an illusion of separation between peoples and nature (Araujo & Martuccelli, 2012). Among higher education students, the neoliberal subjectivity is manifested in the idea that the main purpose of education is to find jobs; and as such, the process of learning gets diluted into a grade.
Today, when Chile is about to vote a new proposal of constitution that offers a new social contract based on of “solidarity”, “gender parity”, “recognition of indigenous rights”, among others values; a key question for us -educators- is how prepared our curriculum and pedagogies are to adhere to the new values of this social contract.
Drawing from the work of Latin American decolonial theories (Quijano, 2007; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018; Rivera Cusicanqui, 2012) and feminist pedagogies (Davis, 2016; hooks, 1994; Shrewsbury, 1997), I engage in a conversation with educators working in secondary schools and higher education institutions on how their curriculum and pedagogies respond to the principles and rights declared in the new proposal of constitution. The main goal is to identify the personal and institutional attachments to the neoliberal subjectivity in the practice of teaching and learning and explore creative ways of how to enact curriculum and pedagogy otherwise.
The conversation
At this moment, I am having collective conversations with other educators on how they are thinking of their curriculum and pedagogy in light of the new constitutional proposal. Conversation differs from the common interview technique, because in this space, the educator and I share the process of designing and implementing curriculum in a less hierarchical dynamic. The invited educators (at least seven) explicitly identify themselves with ones of the branches of critical pedagogy.
It is worth to mention, that design of the conversation is guided by decolonial and feminist theories. Decolonial theories (Quijano, 2007; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018; Rivera Cusicanqui, 2012) invite us to look at the colonial histories in which the organizing categories of power emerged. From decolonial lenses, neoliberalism as an ideology and economic model is a facet of colonial legacies, and it is pretty much embedded around the hierarchies of race, class, and the superiority of humans over nature. Feminist pedagogies (Davis, 2016; hooks, 1994; Shrewsbury, 1997) guide our conversation toward the question how the curriculum can serve to the empowerment and self-realization of students, particularly in what respect to the gendered system of power.

Author

• Roxana Chiappa, Universidad de Tarapaca
  Presenting Author