Reform and educational policies in Chile 1990-2004: The neo-liberalism crisis

Abstract

This article analyses the educational policies implementedin Chile since the return to democracyin 1990, and the way in which they associate to the genesis and development of the present Educational Reform actually. 
The analysis reviewsthe main orientations andeducational programs that have taken place and its most relevant results, assuming the hypothesis that these educational changes did not necessarily require an educational reform with strongemerging features, and also that it has strong contradictions with the neoliberal rationality under which it operates. It also reflects thatthe crisis took place because it operates in places wherethe Ministry of Education lacks the appropriate instruments to guarantee that the different educationalestablishmentsachieve the quality standards. This structural situation has not been solvedand sets the beginning of the crisis of thestacking of the scholarresults in a country wheresocial inequality cannot be ignored let alone mitigated. The analysis mentions the necessity to think different ways tosolve these crises,process in which thearguments of the structural determinism, such as the liberalism, do not have any answerbeyond their own ideology.