You've Got to Fight, For Your Right, to Party

Ingenious, is what I thought to myself after witnessing the boys begging for money.  What eloquence of method, as they lowered a small tin can with a fishing pole.  The can had a paper cut-out of a shark on it.  The boys were at school—that is to say they were occupying the school but not actively studying in it—sitting on the balcony begging me to put spare change in the can.  The real intelligence of their plea for funds is that they are children begging for money for their education.  I felt guilty, as naturally any passerby would, and gave them some money.  Brilliant device.

Last month twenty thousand Chileans protested the government’s lack of spending on education.  They started at Plaza de Italia and marched through downtown carrying banners that said private education is killing our dreams, free education is possible, and Piñera, who described education as a consumer product, is the devil.  There have been a series of such demonstrations for the past few months now.  Like the boys fishing for money, these protesters are rallying against the enormous discrepancy between public and private education: a gap that is ever widening year by year.  Children are on the streets raising funds for books.

Some conservative Chileans that I know don’t see what the big deal is.  They think it’s unfortunate that some children receive better education than others, but that it is impossible to change such things.  Last night, at a dinner party, it was explained to me, on a piece of pink stationary with umbrellas on it, how impossible it really is.  My instructor, a leasing agent, wrote all sorts of strange budgetary figures on the paper accounting for all the hardships that have befallen Chile in the past ten years including the devastating earthquake and the expensive rescue of the famous Chilean miners last year.  He then went on to say that the people protesting should work harder instead of protesting, that this would allow them to spend more on their children’s education.  In a final tirade (I just sat and listened politely) he said that they were draining the economy by blocking the streets of people trying to go to work.  He added that since these poor people lived in different communities on the other side of the river, they didn’t really have the right to march in the city center anyway. 

The protests are largely fun and peaceful: people play instruments and chant certain slogans like the ones on their banners, stray dogs bark and frolic along with the march, children walk hand in hand with their parents, the smell of choripans fills the air.  I was told of some rather violent protests in the past; even this year tanks with tear gas attacking the crowds could be seen as well as the use of water cannons.  However, these days both sides are armed with video cameras.  Most protesters have phones with video capability, and many of the police, armed with riot gear, also carry small hand held cameras.  This is in part responsible for the now fairly peaceful demonstrations.

Chile is not alone in this battle.  Countries around the world are struggling with the same largely theoretical questions as budgets are being cut: does every human have the right to a good education?  Should the government be able to take away my right to pay for a better education for my child?  Is it fair that social hegemony exists?  And then, of course, the more practical concerns of how we are going to pay for “free” education.  I’m not Chilean and I can only speak through the voices of others I’ve met here, but I don’t see how any democracy can function without an educated populace.  I don’t see how any country can claim to view each of its members as equal with something as fundamental as education so visibly separating the classes.  I don’t see how anyone can look a child who’s begging for better schooling squarely in the eye and tell them that they don’t think they’re worth it.