The education after the neoliberalism

Today, in our country, Chile, exists a huge controversy related with education, but this is not something new. In 2006, we saw how students of all over the country made protests against different problems in the educational system, and in 2011 it happened the same.

Does this mean that we do not have problems anymore? Sadly the answer is no. In these days we can see different problems too, but in my opinion, one of the biggest problems is related with neoliberal policy.

According with the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, neoliberal is “relating to a type of Liberalism that believes in a global free market, without government regulation, with businesses and industry controlled and run for profit by private owners”. In Chile, during Pinochet’s government, this policy in education was established. Since then, the Government change his role, now is subsidiary and not guarantor. This means, according with the dictionary mentioned before, that the Government is connected with education, but now his role is less important than before.

As a consequence of this new responsibility, we can notice the following issues: low participation by the government; now education is not a public item, for the contrary is a consumer product; profit and exclusion.

Related with the first idea, as I said before, Chile’s Government is not completely responsible of the educational system because of his new function. As a subsidiary state, they just provide the minimum standards to the people, because if they need something else, a better kind of education, private schools can provide that, they can offer the level of education that the Government does not make available.

This happens because the neoliberal policy promotes the concept of ‘private’, in others words, the private sector is more effective than the public; therefore, the participation of the government is not completely necessary.

This leads to another problem, the education is a kind of consumer product, with this I am referring to the fact that now if someone wants a better education that person needs to pay for that, because is the only alternative that the system gives us, if someone wants to go to a good college, the best option is to go to a private school. For this reason, now education is not a public item, because a good level of education depends of the private sector.
Of course, everyone has the right to receive education, even if they cannot pay, and it’s the Government who gives themthe option to study for free, but the inconvenient is, as I mentioned in the first problem, thatthe Government provides a low level of education and sometimes that limitsthe students' opportunities;their chances to go to the university or an institute and have a good job in the future.

According with that, I can identify the third problem: profit. If we look for this word in the dictionary we will found this: “It is the money that you make in business or by selling things, especially after paying the cost involved”.
This explains a little what happen in the educational system, from a neoliberal’s point of view, everything works according with the market; therefore education is used to make money, because a lot of people pay for have a good education, and that price, in some cases, is very high.
Schools make money with education, because, in the case of private schools, they decided how much the parents must pay.

Unfortunately, some people use this system with ambitious purposes, some of them are just interested in how much money they can get and not if the methodology of the teachers is suitable for the students.

The fourth problem is related with the exclusion, we can see this in different aspects; firstly we notice this issue when it is necessary to take a test to be accepted in a school. This system gives the right to the school to select their students, and is not completely bad in some cases, when the test is not so exclusive, the problem is with this barrier, parents do not have the alternative to choose the school for their children, their option depends on the money they have, parents cannot think in the quality of the school their kids are going because that depends on their incomes and sometimes they cannot afford it.

If we observe the reality, in the majority of the cases, only private schools provide a good level of education and public schools just give the minimum of knowledge that someone needs for their future, and job options are reduced if you come from a public school.

A second point of the exclusion is related whit the social gap. Upper class students go to private schools and lower class students go to public school. Again, all is related with money.
The differences are not in the capacities of the students, but in how much you can pay to study. Hapless, when we see a student with his or her uniform in the street, for example, the majority do not think: “that scholar must be intelligent because of the school where he/she goes”, everyone thinks: “their parents must have money, because of the school where he/she goes”. Corresponding to this, one group is completely different to the other group, their perspectives are different, while one of them is thinking about going to college, another student is thinking where he or she can found a job after finishing school.

I think it is not fair that intelligent students with good abilities cannot have better options in their futures because of their money.

After all this analysis, I can say that there are many different problems in our educational system, and maybe it is no possible to find a very simple or realistic solution.

According to Sebastián Donoso- Díaz and Jorge Alarcon- Leiva’s work, academics of Universidad de Talca, I could identify many problems that we can see today in Chile’s education.

For me the most relevant was the neoliberal policy, tendency that exists today. The main ideas of this policy is, first decrees the participation of the Government in dissimilar areas, in this case, education, as consequence, the private sector takes importance; second, the neoliberal policy promotes another concept, the market, which leads us to one of the biggest problem of this policy, the profit. In these teachers’ work, they identify profit as the main consequence of the neoliberal policy, for the reason that everything is related with money.

I agree with their idea, because if we analyze the education in our country, we can notice that all is controlled and moved by money. If we do not have it, our only option is what the Government can gives us; just the minimum level of education that they offer, and that, sadly, is not enough to have good job optionsand as consequence, students cannot even think in having in the future a better situation that they have.

To summarize, I can say that problems will always exist if the ambitious exists at the same time. If the teachers, Government, parents and students worry about having a good quality of education and not only in what they can obtain from it we could have a good educational system in Chile.

Studies like this can help us to understand what is really happening in our country, because today, is very usual to listen how people complain about the education, but I think that it is important to understand what are the real problems in order to find a good solution, as I said before, works like this can give us an orientation in how to fix this.