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.