¡Viva la Diferencia! Diversity, Exclusion and Inclusion in the Chilean Social Studies Curriculum

• In Event: Exclusiones e inclusiones. Estudios latinoamericanos, ciencia y tecnología e investigación socioeducativai

Abstract

Education has a key role in the struggles of the Chilean Nation State to address the problems of exclusion and inclusion in society. Citizenship Education seems to play a central part in the promotion of social change, and ensure a positive stance towards inclusion of the diverse. In Chile, Citizenship Education is embedded in the Social Studies area, and the official discourse in the matter of diversity, exclusion and inclusion is embodied in the National Curriculum.
Studying a partial portion of the Chilean National Social Studies Curriculum, this paper analyzes the construction of the “diverse”, examining the official discourse and its definition of the traditionally excluded members of civil society. In general terms, this curriculum constructs diversity as a variation between types of people or cultures, portraying difference as a descriptive characteristic. The underrepresentation of traditionally marginalized or excluded groups from the histories of this ‘official knowledge’ (Apple 1993) seems to strengthen the idea that the descriptive character of diversity is somehow an illusion, covering up problematic issues related to structural problems, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, inequality and paternalism. The analysis in this paper also stresses a lack of a critical stance towards the constructions of difference throughout the official texts, and a reinforcement of conservative pedagogical traditions in the methodological approaches, that could sustain an almost passive attitude in students towards the construction of knowledge. These interpretations of difference could lead to new kinds of subjugations, thus accentuating in a way the problem of social inclusion/exclusion.

Author

• Valentina Errazuriz, Teachers College, Columbia University