Should we return to merit in education?

In the April newsletter of the Centro de Estudios Públicos, Sylvia Eyzaguirre publishes an article titled “Returning to Merit in Education,” regarding which it is necessary to make a couple of important clarifications that offer a more rigorous analytical counterpoint to the simple display of widely known data and cosmetic measures. Without delving into the tedious task of demonstrating, one by one, all the technical and historical licenses taken by the author, the aim is to provide a truly pedagogical perspective, with greater technical depth and, of course, more aligned with the role that the State must play in education. Firstly, shifting all the responsibility for the “deterioration of emblematic high schools” (sic) to the removal of access barriers— a key measure of the Inclusion Law— reflects a lack of historical perspective in reading the educational context.

In this regard, available literature clearly indicates that these institutions, mostly founded around a century ago, represent the first offer of public education following the creation of the Republic and emerged with the task of providing opportunities for future success, promoting social mobility, and significantly contributing to the country's development, in a context where coverage and demand for enrollment in secondary education did not exceed 10% of the population. To expect that in almost two centuries of history the conditions and mechanisms of operation of these institutions remain unchanged, unaffected by the passage of time and the cultural and social advancements of humanity, is naive, to say the least. It is not only the Inclusion Law of 2015 that confronts emblematic schools with the challenge of evolving with the times; it is the exponential increase in the number of people with expectations of accessing something better, and the public policies aimed at responding to that citizen demand, leading to nothing less than a constitutional reform to enshrine the obligation of secondary education, increasing coverage to unprecedented figures, which contributed, at that time, to our becoming an OECD country.

To want to regress in terms of equality, returning to a system that conceals segregation under a false concept of merit, is to lack a vision of the State, because, in general, these selection mechanisms overlook a series of contextual variables that significantly affect a person's academic and social performance, such as socioeconomic, sociocultural, and socioemotional conditions, whose existence does not stem from the will of those who possess them, but rather are an inheritance that places individuals on very different rungs regarding access to spaces of educational excellence. Neither talent nor contextual variables are conditions chosen at birth; they are circumstances over which one has no control, and for this reason, it is not viable to compare the performances of individuals who, from birth, are permeated by very different circumstances and experiences, which, for better or worse, influence their attitudes and aptitudes. Thus, the proposed measures are nothing more than the well-known recipe of responding from “common sense”—and from a naive simplification—to a complex, structural, and deep-seated problem.

Measures that can be considered somewhat serious in the face of the challenges faced by emblematic schools are more in line with strengthening the capabilities of educational teams, enabling them to adapt and respond to the challenges posed by the teaching-learning process, now situated in a school culture that eliminates access barriers and where the adult world, unlike the experience of the 20th century, cannot take its pedagogical authority for granted, but must work to be recognized, valued, and validated by the student body. In summary, it is not the profile of those who apply to and access emblematic high schools that needs to change; it is the profile of the professionals who receive them that must be refined to offer them an excellent pedagogical and educational management, as has been done by the Augusto D´Halmar Emblematic High School, the setting of the fervently celebrated message from President Kast cited by Eyzaguirre.