I think the article “Students march for a better Chile” by Cabalin shows how an external point of view is revealing with respect to an unacceptable reality that is assumed to be daily and is therefore naturalized. In that sense, this sentence appears significant:
“In fact, families finance 73% of higher education in Chile, a figure that greatly exceeds the average (16%) for OECD countries”
I consider very revealing data provided by the author about the disproportionate percentage of expenses generated by the education that is assumed by chilean families. It is indicative of how in our society, a consumer society, people are willing to borrow even decades, accepting this as natural. This society harvest individuals working just to pay their debts. Fortunately, today stands a critical spirit that calls into question the system that is not natural but a reflection of political and economic orientation has led the development of the education system over the past thirty years.
We can see how the emphasis on the problem of access to higher education of previous governments has only operated as a shelter for the marketization of education. We believe that inadequate attention to the quality of education is not only serious impediments posed to the country's development restricting the technological innovation, for example. Moreover, this deficit in quality implies a lack of civic values that translates into the reproduction of a frustrated professional army without a future vision.
This publication made sense to many readers, some of them Latin Americans, who compare the situation in Chile described by the author the educational system of their own countries, finding similarities. One of them says:
“All Latin American countries which follow the Anglo American education model have the same problems because education is solely regarded as merchandise which opens the door for all shades of corruption”
Other discussion which is installed with this article is the media coverage has had the phenomenon in Chile. How “Chilean media is showing only what our government wants”. How the movement for quality education has been criminalized in the media as a strategy to divert attention from what really matters.
