My last blog from Chile!

Hey everyone! My time here came to an end SO quickly, so I figured I’d write one last entry in here before I get home, with intentions of continuing to update the blog in the future (but we’ll see how that goes…). 

I have wanted to write about education in Chile in this blog for a while now, and now (after writing a paper and doing a presentation on it in one of my classes) I feel like I finally understand it enough to attempt to explain it. Doing the report really surprised me and answered a lot of my questions about why education is the way it is in Chile. To begin with, it is obvious that education is a problem everywhere. Even countries that seem to have good results still face difficulties. Chile, however, has a system that came into being during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in the 1980s. The day before he left office in 1989, Pinochet passed a law called the Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Educación (Organic Constitutional Education Law), which basically privatized the education system so that people could profit off of schools. This was one of the many neoliberal reforms that the dictator put into effect, and it had very bad consequences for students.

First of all, the Chilean school system has three different types of schools: private schools, particular subsidized schools, and municipal schools. The private schools are very expensive, costing upwards of $500 a month—an amount that only the upper class in Chile can afford.

The particular subsidized schools are partly subsidized by the government, meaning parents pay some of the costs of the education, ranging from $10 to $100 a month. These schools are generally worse in quality than private schools but better than the municipal schools, which are free for students. However, as a result of Pinochet’s reforms, these schools are managed by anyone who can afford to start a school. Therefore, people with no background or experience in education (such as lawyers or doctors) are able to start schools as long as they have money, regardless of the fact that they have no idea of what resources the teachers and students need to provide and receive a good education. Obviously this is a recipe for disaster.

The municipal schools are generally the worst schools in Chile, and they are the only free schools for students. This creates a very stratified school system because only the lower class tends to assist municipal schools. In reality, parents are able to choose which school their children attend, but because school transportation costs money in Chile, lower class families are almost always forced to send their children to the worst of the municipal schools because they have no other options.

Because the structure of the system forces lower class students into the worst schools and upper class students into the best schools, it is inherently unequal. Also, even students who pay money for school tend to have bad returns on their education due to problems within the schools, including lack of resources and lack of evaluation. For example, teachers in primary and secondary schools in Chile are not evaluated. Not at all. In other words, Chilean teachers are never forced to change their teaching styles if their students are failing, which results in very bad returns by the students. Also, schools lack resources to deal with special needs students, who are almost always alienated by the system.

Another very interesting fact I learned about the education system has to deal with universities. In Chile, and completely opposite from the United States, the public universities are much better than the private universities. This stems from the fact that high school students in Chile have to take a university-entrance exam, which decides which universities they can attend depending on the scores they receive. The best students end up going to public universities, where they study what they want. Other students, who do not do well on the test, are forced to either go to a trade school or another institution or pay a very large amount of money to attend a private university so that they can study what they want. Therefore, the difference between public and private is the students—the best go to public universities and the worst go to private universities and basically pay their way toward getting a degree.

Because education in Chile is more of a business than anything, all the people that do not have money lose. The teachers and students are not evaluated, which causes problems to persist. The structure of the system produces inequality, which makes the poor get poorer while the rich get richer, which is not good for a country that already has one of the worst income distributions in Latin America. And the system doesn’t encourage the students to be competitive, which is one of the major differences I noticed as a foreigner taking classes with Chileans.

I know that was quite the diatribe on education, but I found it very interesting (and upsetting) at how the system works in Chile. Let me know your thoughts on all of this—it is a very thought-provoking topic.

So, moving on to something completely different now, I want to talk about my last couple weeks in Chile! I am currently on my plane flight back to the US, so by the time this is posted I will be home!

A couple very exciting things that happened in the past couple weeks were the following: 

1. I went on a horseback ride in an area about an hour away from my city called Ritoque. The ride was 7 hours long, as we rode over dunes, next to rivers, and next to the beach. I hadn’t ridden a horse in a long time, so it was really fun to do that again, especially in such a gorgeous setting. The guide was a girl that had ridden horses her entire life, and the other person in our group was a avid rider also, so we ended up running almost the entire time (up and down sand dunes, next to the river, through the forest, and on the beach). At one point, we were galloping on a completely desolate, flat, gorgeous beach that seemed to continue forever, had wind in our hair and salt water splashing up on our legs as the horses ran their hearts out. I couldn’t stop thinking about the song “Wild Horses” by Natasha Bedingfield (download it if you have a chance and you will understand what I mean). It was a blast! Also, as part of the ride, we had a barbeque in a small forest, where some cowboys cooked meat and sausages and salads and desserts for us. We even drank wine to cool off from the tiring day. Then after lunch we went back, and on the way home the guides even asked us to help them herd cows! (I guess in Chile going on a guided horse tour includes becoming a cowboy for a day). But we had fun with it!

2.   After the horseback ride, I had about 2 weeks of classes left. However, because I am a slacker and wanted to travel more before I headed out, I decided to buy a plane ticket to Patagonia and see the bottom of the world. J I went with three guy friends of mine, and we geared up to do a nine-day trek through the National Park Torres del Paine. Then, we set off on our trip, and I had the TIME OF MY LIFE. On every turn of the trek, we were confronted with absolutely breathtaking landscapes—snow-covered mountains, magnificent rock towers, lakes of glacier water, lush valleys, enormous glaciers, iceberg-filled lakes, and pretty much anything else you can imagine.

The trek was not easy, and we were pretty burnt out by the end of it, but it was so worth it. I love the boys I went with, and we had such a great time hiking, camping, and enjoying Chile together. Without a doubt, what I saw in Patagonia was the most incredible thing I have ever seen in my life. J

3.  After I returned from Patagonia, I had a final for one of my classes (go figure) and then I had just two more days to pack, say my goodbyes, and leave Chile. In those two days, I started to reflect a lot on my time here, and I became very nostalgic. All in all, I enjoyed myself very much. I took a break from my normal busy, stressful life and did things I had never done before. I moved for the first time in my life and learned how to deal with that. I learned a language and a culture. I traveled to a huge portion of Chile. I fell in love with my Chilean family and friends. I fell in love with traveling even more. And more than anything, I discovered many things about myself and what I want to do with my life. I don’t mean to be so sentimental and corny, but I feel it necessary, for myself if nothing else, to reflect on what this trip did for me. After all, I am extremely lucky to have been given this opportunity, and I am so happy I have to chance to talk about it now.

Well, I think I will stop writing a novel now and let you go, but take care! I posted lots of pictures on Facebook again, so here are the links if you are interested in taking a look. 

Patagonia:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2401663&l=20e91&id=10048141

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2401679&l=ba3ec&id=10048141

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2401690&l=7990e&id=10048141 

Last couple weeks in and around Valpo:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2401706&l=40339&id=10048141

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2401713&l=a9a88&id=10048141

Take care and I will see you all very soon! 

Anne Marie