EDUCATION IN CHILE.
PRELIMINARY.
The last two years have seen in Chile a distinct gathering up of the threads of educational purpose. The feeling of dissatisfaction with the primary school system, for many years inarticulate, has found a voice, and all signs point to Chile’s finally securing a modernized system of public instruction. The head and front of the indictment drawn by national students of education has been the complete Germanization of the system through the employment of a considerable number of German educational experts during the decade from 1904 to 1914. The climax came in the revelations of the propagandist activities of the German educators brought out at the meeting of the National Educational Association in 1917.
Financial support of public instruction in Chile has never been stinted, so far as its existent state was concerned. As merely one item may be adduced the fact that in March, 1916, the Congress authorized the President to devote to public instruction for specific aims such as the building and remodeling of schoolhouses, $4,000,000 annually for 10 years, through the medium of the Central Council of Education, in which was vested the discretion as to methods and objects of the expenditure. In 1918 the budget was voted by the Congress of $35,450,000 for public instruction, as against that of $32,373,404 for 1917. So that the authorities of the Government must justly be credited with a practical interest in education which encourages teachers and other active workers in their efforts toward greater efficiency.
In 1917 there had been increased discussion of matters educational; and in June of that year President Sanfuentes in his message showed that the time had come to impress on the national system of public instruction a more practical stamp, making it adequate to the needs of everyday life and the special conditions of the country. Along with this he urged the specialization of secondary education as, just then, the urgent and opportune point of attack for the development of Chile’s scientific and industrial possibilities.
This message was followed by action of the Congress which clearly showed the traditional line of cleavage long prevailing in Chile’s social and political system. The demand for some form of modernized public instruction could no longer be repressed; and a conservative deputy introduced the project of a law to insert in the constitution a provision for compulsory primary schooling and compulsory religious instruction, the only modification of the latter being the concession to the parent to choose the forms and means of such instruction. The radical party was not slow in countering with a project adopting the feature of compulsory attendance but decentralizing and completely secularizing the existing system. The latter proposal, now made for the first time in the history of Chilean legislation, was especially bold, as Chile has never done away with the essentially religious tone of her education. She retains representatives of the State church on her National Council of Education, freely recognizes parochial primary schools, and has her secondary schools largely managed by religious instructors and under distinctively religious auspices.
The compromise bill formulated by a specially appointed commission of the Congress sought to satisfy both extremes. It vested supreme administrative authority in educational matters in a council of 18, sitting in Santiago, presided over by the Minister of Justice and Instruction; but it allowed 11 of the members to be named by the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies, and the President of the Republic. This feature was severely criticized by the liberals and by the National Educational Association as still keeping educational authority in the hands of politicians, not intrusting it to men really interested in education, and making it possible to block all educational progress whenever desired.
The bill made four years’ attendance in primary schools, private or public, compulsory for all children between 7 and 13, and required all reaching the latter age without completing the prescribed course to continue until 15. Poverty could not be pleaded in excuse, as grants by the State were specified and graduated in amounts according to need. Exemption from religious instruction was allowed upon written application of the parent or upon certification of the local junta, another feature opposed by the National Educational Association on the ground that the junta’s powers could never be so amplified legally. Programs of study and schedules should be under the authority of the inspector general of primary instruction. Primary instruction was to be imparted to complete illiterates in schools called supplementary, managed independently of existing primary schools, and to partial illiterates in schools called complementary, conducted in conjunction with existent primary schools.
The bill, as outlined above, encountered opposition from many sources, and still remains unenacted. Pending its passage, the Minister of Public Instruction, by virtue of the power vested in him, issued in 1918 a decree organizing primary education in three grades of two years each, continued by one grade of vocational education of from one to three years. Attendance is not specifically compulsory, though the local junta has power so to declare it in the schools of its jurisdiction. The requirements as to qualifications of a primary teacher are made more rigorous; he must be a citizen of Chile, of good character, not less than 18 nor more than 40 years of age at the time of appointment, and a graduate of a Government normal school, or holding a degree of a Chilean or recognized foreign institution.