Public Schools in Emergency Context: their transformation and/or closing after the chilean earthquake

Carmen NúñezPontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso

After the EarthquakeBig zones of our country were

devastated after the earthquake and tsunami last February 28th 2010.

51% of publics schools were affected

The discourse of the“opportunity” of disaster

The closing of public schools begins before the earthquake, especially in rural zones

These schools have a low enrollment, and provide a bad quality education

Closing schools seems the reasonable thing to do.

Closing schools responds to a quality matter, and/or a policy for reducing expenses in education?

Teacher Union: “It is a policy of privatization”

An ethnographic research about closing of rural schools: the case of Chaimávida and Carlos Saenger (Las Pataguas)

Crossing the highway

The discourse imposes a rationality where the public school must be economically self -sustainable

¿Why a public institution must be self-sustainable? ¿It is a expense or an investment for the state?

The self-sustaintability of the public school

This rationality dominates what it is thinkable for the authorities

Even for teachers it is difficult to resist this rationality, it is hard for them not to agree.

But for the community, the financial argument for school closing seems not to be a legitimate raison

The role of rural teacher todayThe role of rural teacher has

changedThey don`t live in the local

community. Their sense of belonging to the community and their identification with it, is becoming weak.

Their work begin to be seen as a service, diminishing the social function it had before

The Community“We don’t know why they didn´t defend the school”

An Other Challenge for the TUThe closing and school

consolidation is a policy that became strong after the disaster

The Teacher Union haven`t placed successfully this matter in the public discussion yet

After the disaster…Similarities between Katrina in New Orleans, with what is happening in Chile after the earthquake:

The disaster represents an opportunity to take on interventions at the educational level.

These interventions are presented as an economical issue, leaving out or behind the educational implications.

There are strong social and cultural implications for the communities, who lose social and cultural capital through these decisions.