PRIMARY EDUCATION.
Unlike Argentina and Brazil, primary public education has always been left in the hands of the central national government, the individual Province having control of financial outlay and the construction of school buildings, and this only when requirements of the national law are fulfilled. Uniform programs of study and schedules of hours are enforced throughout the nation. But conditions of scarcity of materials and labor render it impossible to keep many of the old buildings in repair. The tendency long criticized by the Association of Teachers, to cram school buildings into the half dozen larger centers, seems in a fair way to be checked.[1]
[1] Criticism has been freely expressed in the public press of the use of a disproportionately large part of the primary school fund voted by the Congress for the use of the executive.
This new order of things is most plainly seen in the attention paid to rural schools, which have predominated in the number built since 1916. The Government has instructed the committee on public works and the department of primary instruction to develop a plan of building uniform types of rural school. The expenses are to be borne out of the fund just mentioned. Three types are contemplated, with a capacity of 80, 160, and 400 pupils respectively, solidly constructed, conforming strictly to all modern demands of sanitation, lighting, and heating. In many places the North American principle of consolidation of schools has been applied, to the distinct improvement of attendance and instruction, 200 small and struggling schools having been abolished and 100 annexed to others more centrally situated. With these gains, however, the crying need in Chile is acknowledged to be more schools. It is estimated that 10,000 elementary schools are yet needed for her approximately 750,000 children, of whom slightly less than 400,000 are in the schools of this grade, and 50,000 in private parochial schools. All educational thinkers are agreed that the situation calls for legal compulsory attendance on primary instruction, rigidly enforced.