The first
thing that we should ask when we thought about Chilean education system it’s
what do we understand for “education”. Is it just pure knowledge of math, science
and history, as schools and university’s give today, or we should expect
something more? I think our educational system has a lot of problems today,
including the most mentioned that are the profit in public schools or the bad
quality of the education that children and young people are receiving. I agree
with all of those demands, because it’s unfair that only a few can have access
to good education meanwhile others don’t. It’s also an injustice that people
who don’t have the economical background to go to an expensive university should
stay out of the opportunities that a public institution must bring. But I want
to make an emphasis on the second demand of quality.
As I said
in the beginning, the first thing we should ask ourselves is what we understand
for education. I think that in the last decades, education has been considerate
as a “pack” of basic knowledge and when you get it you can choose the path you want
to follow. I don’t agree with this vision. Why? Because I think there are many
kinds of intelligence and many ways to educate a person. The system we have now
only measures one type of intelligence, but what about all the other kinds like
arts or local traditions. I always ask myself why we educate children with a
generic system forgetting the incredible and diverse cultural context where we
live. Traditions have been forgotten by this system and in the end that contributes
to make disappear our culture that is the first education we have. I think that
our educational system has to change, but not considering again only one way of
education. We must develop other potentials in young people and encourage them
to explore and to build a new conception of education. To conclude, I say that
a diverse education that develops all kinds of intelligence and potentials is
the one that is missing today in Chile.
