Education in Chile: The fraught politics of the classroom | The Economist 29/10/2011

The Economist, 29/10/2011, extracto.-

IT WAS back in May, in the southern-hemisphere autumn, when Chile’s students and many schoolchildren began taking to the streets to demand wholesale reform of the education system. Now spring has come, but there is no sign of settling what has turned into the most serious political conflict for two decades in Latin America’s most successful country. Talks between the students and the government began in August, but broke down on October 5th. Chile is paying an increasingly high price for the deadlock.

Pupils have occupied hundreds of schools since May, locking out their teachers and depriving tens of thousands of children of their education. Many university students have not been to classes for months. Most weeks they stage marches, often unauthorised, in Santiago, the capital. With depressing predictability these end in clashes between a minority of violent youths and the police. Many residents now avoid the city centre on protest days to escape the bricks, bottles, water cannon and tear gas. Some 1,800 protesters have been arrested since May and over 500 police injured. The damage runs into millions of dollars. Having seen his popularity plummet since the dispute began, Chile’s beleaguered centre-right president, Sebastián Piñera, is trying to deflect the education debate into one about law and order.