For the past week, education has been the news in Chile. Secondary students across the country have been on 'paro', with dozens of high schools actually taken over (en toma) by students. At issue is the law on education, passed days before Pinochet left office in 1990. The students have three specific demands: that students get free transit passes for school hours, that the fee for the national university entrance exams be dropped, and the end of the 'jornada escolar completa' that has them in school from 8:30 to 5:40. The mobilization finally hit our school on Friday. In the morning the kids had class meetings where they talked (read: shouted) and voted on further action. The kids here are most interested in the last issue, of the full school days. They all walk to school, and those that take the uni entrance exams probably all fall in the category that doesn't have to pay anyways.
Anyways, today at about 9 am all the students marched past my window on their way to meet up with the other high school students from this region for protesting and such things. There are maybe 30 kids in school, mostly seventh graders. Students are meeting with the government today, and pending results of the discussion, tomorrow may or may not be a national strike day. Since we have nothing to do at school, we're thinking of going downtown and taking part in the madness.
The protests are supposed to be 'peaceful', but on Friday a few of my otherwise docile eleventh grade boys were disturbingly excited about the prospect of chucking rocks at riot police. A lot of them genuinely care about the issues, but a lot of them are very misguided revolutionaries. What is impressive is that students have really mobilised in the past week, largely with the support of parents and teachers' unions. There's a lot of talk about seizing the opportunity to reevaluate the education reform of 1990, to shake up the system, turn out something better. I'm certainly watching the news. This weekend I gaped at the high schools downtown that have been taken over by the students -- they have signs everywhere, chairs and tables jammed in the gates, students camping outside. The signs are pretty standard -- stuff about the comercialisation of education, the right to education, also a lot of direct appeals to Bachelet. Her election slogan was 'Estoy Contigo' with pictures of kids, families, pregnant women, you get the idea. So now there are a lot of '¿¿estas comigo??' signs. People in general seem to be disappointed with Bachelet -- a case of unrealisitic expectations?
Well, I think I'm going to head home. A teacher without students...sad indeed.
I had, by the way, a fantastic, very Chilean weekend. Will write /post pictures asap.
1 comment:
hey carla! oh my goodness! that sounds so exciting. it must be really cool being right in the middle of it all. its one thing to watch on tv, but another to actually be there. and its really cool that such young kids are so politically active. that would never happen in america. but i also have one question for you. since i know you won't reply to an email, i figured i'd ask you here. umm ok, so you know that stuff you told me about in canada, the kinda deodarant stuff. won't go into details on here, but i can't remember what its called and in the US its prescription, so i figured i'd get it here because you can get anything here. ok, so if you can just make a quick reference to it or just send a quick one line email to me about it. thank you! i hope things don't get too crazy for you. goodluck and keep us updated! :D
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