Denying systemic inequality in segregated Chilean schools: race-neutral discourses among administrative and teaching staff

This article was originally published with error. This version has been corrected. Please see Corrigendum (https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2018.1427525).

Abstract

This article addresses the educational context in which ethnically segregated high poverty schools operate in Chile, and the ways that inequalities within these establishments are understood by members of their administrative and teaching staff. In particular we draw attention to the unwillingness of the majority of these employees to name or recognize specific forms of institutional inequality. Following critical pedagogy literature we argue that the Chilean education system reproduces a fear of talk among teachers working in areas with high density indigenous populations, which obscures unequal social structures and opportunities for specific (class, gender, ethnic) groups in school contexts. Based on data from 12 interviews with school staff and observations from four schools in southern Chile, we analyze how intersecting inequality is discursively reduced by predominantly white teachers to individual deficit, de-politicized geographical problems of access to schooling, and the normalizing of low achievement across schools with students from similar backgrounds.

Keywords:

• Educational inequality
• color-blind racism
• silencing
• Mapuche
• Chile
• segregation

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Correction to: Denying systemic inequality in segregated Chilean schools: race-neutral discourses among administrative and teaching staff

Notes

This article was originally published with error. This version has been corrected. Please see Corrigendum (https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2018.1427525).

1. The Mapuche are the largest indigenous group in Chile, comprising 84.4% of the indigenous population, and 7.7% of the national population (CASEN 2013).

2. Despite the implementation of an intercultural and bilingual education program in Chile, teachers are not trained to work within high composition indigenous contexts.

3. As discussed later in the article, indigenous populations are distinct from other ethnic categories such as urban migrants, but we use the term ethnic composition and indigenous composition interchangeably.

4. The data presented in this paragraph is based on the authors’ descriptive analysis of national test score data.

5. Intermarriage, social mobility and assimilation have contributed to the diffusiveness of mestizaje and indigeneity in Chile. High levels of exogamy among the Mapuche have challenged Chile’s racial ideology (Mateo Piñones and Valenzuela Carvallo 2017) but it is unusual to hear racial categories of mestizaje such as ‘champurria’ used in Chilean society.

6. We note that although some schools employ more indigenous teachers, many of these are part-time roles with less responsibility, as we discuss later in greater detail.

7. Two parents’ opinions are included here, though parent and student ‘voices’ will be addressed in greater detail in a separate paper.

8. We acknowledge that aggregate school test score results are a relatively poor indicator of quality of education. We detail other aspects in this section.

9. Luna (2015) also notes that ethnic minority (Mapuche) teachers are also susceptible to assimilating these racialized understandings.