Securing eliteness: class strategies of an elite school in Chile

ABSTRACT

The ways in which elite schools in Chile reproduce power and privilege within the nation’s highly inequitable schooling system are largely ignored by researchers and the general public. In this article, the authors address this gap by identifying and exploring the primary class strategies that an elite school employs to secure their elite status. Through these strategies, the school keeps their community closed to the outside world, promotes shared values within their community, and remains faithful to founding principles in their educational project. These strategies allow the school to uphold strong social isolation, to shield them from public scrutiny, to cultivate elite subjectivities, and to forge a framework through which hierarchies are established. The authors argue that these class strategies not only secure the school’s elite status and reputation but also are central in maintaining and advancing their students’ class positioning in Chile.

KEYWORDS:

• Chile
• elite schools
• social class
• class strategies
• educational inequities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 A pseudonym, as are all names of people in this article who attend or work at this school.

2 The headmaster chose this person to be our main contact since she, among other responsibilities, manages external relations.

3 Croft enrols students from ‘pre-kinder’ (age 4) to year 12 (age 18). This research study involved teacher and student participants only in Croft’s Senior School (years 9 through 12).