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The Sources of Infrastructural Power: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Chilean Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Hillel David Soifer
Hillel David Soifer*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Abstract

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The striking development of Chilean public primary education during the nineteenth century has often been noted. Existing explanations emphasize industrialization and social change in shaping societal demand for schooling, and elite consensus, the role of individual leaders, and low levels of inequality and social heterogeneity in shaping the state's educational provision. This article complements existing state-centered arguments by showing that the institutions of local and regional administration were also crucial in transforming policy changes into real progress in primary education. As Chilean schooling spread and became systematized over the course of the nineteenth century, local state officials not only effectively carried out the state's educational policies but also refined it independently and even pushed for the deepening of educational development, and particularly the systematic control of schooling.

Resumo

Resumo

El impresionante desarrollo que la educación primaria tuvo en Chile durante el siglo XIX ha sido una fuente constante de interés. Las explicaciones existentes enfatizan el rol de la industrialización y el cambio social como factores relevantes en la conformación de la demanda social por educación formal. El consenso de la élite, el rol de los líderes individuales, y los bajos niveles de inequidad y heterogeneidad social, resultaron también importantes para ampliar la oferta educativa del estado. Este artículo complementa los argumentos centrados en el estado, al mostrar que sus instituciones regionales y locales fueron cruciales en transformar el cambio de las políticas en progreso real de la educación primaria. Al tiempo que el sistema educativo chileno se ampliaba y sistematizaba a lo largo del siglo XIX, oficiales del estado local no solamente operaron las políticas educativas, sino que también las refinaron de manera independiente. Estos mismos oficiales pugnaron, del mismo modo, por la ampliación del desarrollo educativo, y, particularmente, del control sistemático del sistema escolarizado.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , 2009 , pp. 158 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

Research for this article was funded by a Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education, and by the dean of faculty at Bates College. Early versions were presented at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University and the 2007 meetings of the Society for Latin American Studies. I am grateful to John Coatsworth, Jorge Domínguez, Jens Hentschke, Steven Levitsky, Heather Lindkvist, Karen Melvin, Annie Stilz, Matthias vom Hau, and Laurence Whitehead for helpful comments and conversations, and to the managing editor and three LARR reviewers for many useful suggestions and pointed criticisms.

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