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.