Globally Elite

April 25, 2023

The Untouchables: Social Closures in Elite Chilean Schools

Elite schooling in Chile is quite exclusive and rarely studied. In part of my work for our group research project I was tasked with finding literature supporting our ideas of a “bubble within a bubble” in Croft.

Through my research I found an article titled, “’The Untouchables’: Elite Schools, Privileges, and New Scenarios” by Josefa Barrera, Alejandra Falabella, and Tomás Ilabaca. This paper draws attention to the educational experiences of the elite in Chile, where little research currently exists. Elite schooling in Chile plays a pivotal role in preserving elite status among students as well as “social closure.” In our research we used the term “bubbles,” which relates to these specific groups’ students at Croft associate with but how Croft itself is one big group that seems to be untouched by those not at Croft.

These social closures the authors mention in their work come from the locations of these elite institutions. All the elite institutions in Chile are located in the metropolitan areas of the country. The locations of these schools create an interesting juxtaposition where they are close to some of the most impoverished households in the country but not accessible to anyone who does not come from an elite family.

Chile shows some of the highest rates of segregation in the world, with students from the wealthiest families in the country accounting for 8% of enrollment in their education system (Barrera et al.), where the parents of these students are contributing significant amounts of money to these schools on top of paying full tuition. This lines up with Croft, where there is no financial aid given to any student, and therefore, all students must be able to pay for tuition. Croft specifically is creating this bubble, or social closure, where only those who are able to afford to be in these spaces are allowed to be there. This paper supports the themes my group and I pulled from interviews from Croft students on how exclusive this school is and the difficulty in finding literature that supports our narrative.

The authors acknowledge the difficulty in finding literature about elite Chilean schools, explaining this by saying it’s “taboo” in Chilean culture to study the elites. I wonder if this feeling comes from being scared of the elites and what would happen if researchers uncovered any issues that exist within elite Chilean society. Chile is an incredibly unique country where elites, especially those who are associated with Croft, miss the dictatorship under Pinochet, as elite individuals were heavily advantaged under his reign.

After reading this article, the authors only solidified that these bubbles exist in the context of elite schooling in Chile, and that there is little research that looks into this. There is a reproduction of elitism that happens in these schools, where only those who can afford being in these spaces or those who have elite connections are able to succeed. This schooling opportunity allows students to enter the Chilean economy with well-paying jobs and connections to politicians, advancing them in society far greater than their non-elite educated peers. Those non-elites who are unable to break into these bubbles are so heavily disadvantaged in comparison to these elite individuals, creating incredible amounts of capital gaps.

Works Cited

Barrera, Josefa, et al. “‘Los intocables’: la educación escolar de las élites, sus privilegios y nuevos escenarios.” Pensamiento Educativo, Revista de Investigación Latinoamericana (PEL), vol. 58, no. 1, 1, Apr. 2021. pensamientoeducativo.uc.cl, https://doi.org/10.7764/PEL.58.1.2021.3 .