Graduate from High School as a metaphor for contemporary Chile

Abstract

The mobilization of young students –from secondary schools and later from higher education– over the past 10 years in the country (PNUD 2015) triggered a series of challenges to the social structure and its inequalities. These demands have led actors from the political space and public opinion, among others, to take up these approaches that are organizing social conversation in Chile. The access to higher education is an aspiration for the young who are finishing their secondary education. However, this transition is experienced as a mix of tensions –imbalance, dislocation and uneasiness– which characterize the way they face and solve the transition to graduate from secondary education. Such experiences illustrate the kind of society Chilean people have built, the young, once more, being a good metaphor for the present time.