I am a teacher and work in a municipal educational unit that caters to youth and adults of Valparaiso. It is a difficult context, violations of all kinds parade every day before our eyes.
All these stories have a common element: for various reasons could not finish their studies at the school. That is the context, a ghetto that concentrates to a specific sector of the Chilean population, poor people.
Some adults concerned that they could not stop because they were parents or young mothers. Do you remember what happened when a partner pregnant? The school declared him the war, she was expelled.
Others commented that they had to contribute economically to the family, made them impossible to work and study at the same time. outside!
Some young people come because they were “unable to adapt to the formal system” and the annexed school did what he did best in our history, marginalized him, excluded him. “Out! Failure to comply with the student profile”.
Fathers, mothers, parents, tutors who read can have you heard that phrase?
Other concrete examples on how our “traditional” education system has worked until recently.
The student is hyperactive: “Suggest neurological evaluation, psychologist, psychiatrist, pill”…
Student is hypoactive: “Neurological evaluation, psychologist, psychiatrist, pill”… no certificate of baptism? Out!
Student is caught smoking, outside!
How? Are they not married? Out!
Student presents diagnosis on any specific educational needs: “school is not ready, the school does not have integration program, school does not count with professionals, school non, non, non”… school “invites or suggests a change of environment pedagogical”… parents, mothers, parents, tutors who read have you heard that phrase? The school discriminated against you, without euphemisms, while being in “that” school was already sufficient merit.
With these realities to the base – and other worst – is is drawn up the Inclusion Act, with its achievements, omissions and perfectible, no doubt.
His spirit it generates the conditions and guarantees so that the bulk of the student population could have the same opportunities of access, progress and graduation, without looking at the history, appearance, beliefs, family system, wallet, last name, diagnosis, need educational… without discriminating, in the background.
What could be fairer to “compete” in equal status and as likely to be “accepted” in the place that I decide to apply? In this way, almost 80% of the families who made the application under the new system of admission school could enroll their children in schools in their preferences. When in the history of Chile we have these guarantees of access to education?
As a teacher, I can do the invitation to schools to look, to rethink new forms of community; my colleagues to watch is epistemologically and break the circle of oppression; managers to Polish models management according to the new requirements and needs of the student population; students, to continue showing our gaps, no doubt loaded with fewer judgments than we; to the parents and guardians to be aware of how the school has been and see the benefits of macro that has the law of Inclusion and, no doubt, to make a critical reading on the false information.
As proxy, I am fully satisfied with the random system. Happy because my son, with this simple procedure, broke with years of exclusion and segregation which was his family with his friends from the population.
Happy because Chile children begin to germinate the seeds of inclusion, justice and equity. To democratize our system.
This, and more, I am not agree with that “merit” is restored as a criterion for selection to the school admission. Selection for notes and interviews only will help isolate the poorest students.
Thus, the exclusion of students like see those us in the unit for adults shall be guaranteed. Boys and girls, and they will remain outside the education system, not loose or lack of “merit”, but that schools may discriminate against them for not having dealt with the conditions of its environment.
How much talent will remain trapped in towns and “ghettos” product that settlements rejected them “does not conform to its educational project”.
Poured in this op-ed content is the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial line nor the counter position.
