Various criticisms and reactions have caused Ignacio Briones’ proposal on education, which raised an investment to hold competitions with the aim of bringing foreign teachers and improving the quality of education in Chile. Former President of the College of Teachers and current candidate for the constituent convention, Mario Aguilar, responded to the idea of Evópoli’s presidential candidate.
“There’s an old movie called “The Indecent Proposal.” It seems to me that this same title could be given to the sayings of Mr Ignacio Briones, former Minister of Finance and today presidential candidate for the right-wing pact. A neoliberal of volume and back, minister of Piñera, a guy I met personally when he touched me at the public sector table on the subject of readjustment. The truth is that he stood out for his arrogance, arrogance, for his rather contemptuous attitude towards workers’ organizations and in general towards workers,” Aguilar said through a video.
He added that “this is evident in his proposal that foreign teachers must be brought in to improve the quality of education in Chile. I want to tell mr. Briones that you are quite lost. He is more than diagnosed by studies of different kinds that the problems of Chilean education are structural, it has to do with a model, based on market logic, a model that has transformed education into a commodity, where his boss, Mr Piñera, came to declare that education is a consumer good.”
“In this context, Chilean teachers have been pressured to give education that productivist seal, that hallmark, that seal of performance, that seal from which people don’t care, but import figures, yields and rankings. That style of education, that model, that you neoliberals have imposed in Chile for years,” he said.
Following this line he commented that “one of the great cries of the social outburst in Chile that occurred on October 18, 2019, was to improve education, but above all to change the sense of education. You show a lot of ignorance, you show that you have no idea what is going on in Chilean education with your sayings.”
“Chilean teachers are well catalogued internationally. We are invited to give courses and conferences, we are permanently invited to write and publish articles in education journals, there are many Chilean teachers working in other countries. In Europe and the United States many work in the educational system.”
Aguilar also noted that “this kind of absurd pretence that better teachers from abroad are coming is quite lacking in reality. I would also like to say to you, Mr Briones, ignorant as you are, that foreign teachers work in Chile.”
“Get to know a little bit about your country, Mr. Briones, before launching bombastic, demagogic proposals, get to know and investigate what’s going on in Chile. You who live from the thousand-level of Santiago upwards do not know what is going on in the country. Perhaps you have no idea that many schools in Chile work foreign teachers and have no idea that in many schools in different countries of the world Chilean teachers work,” he said.
“What you intend is to undermine Chilean teachers, but you are wrong, lost and totally out of tune with the feeling of Chilean citizenship. Feeling is a high value for your teachers. People have seen the effort in times of pandemic and how we have committed ourselves to the education of their children despite the adverse conditions. People know well that those who have faced and responded to the crisis of education caused by the pandemic have been teachers and not the Government, not you, not those who have ruled with economic criteria, who have made the pandemic a business, who have denied the social aid that our people need.”
The leader commented that “we are the ones who have put ourselves at the forefront in this crisis, we are the ones who have paid for the internet, we are the ones who have solved a number of shortcomings that the system has, the little help to families that do not have connectivity.”
He finally emphasized that “quite indecent your proposal Mr. Briones, quite clear and net reflection that you have no idea what happens in Chile and quite exemplifier that is absolutely disconnected from the feeling of citizenship.”
