Are They All The Same?
Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent a few hours talking to a student at a private, co-educational school in a large city in Chile. His self-awareness about his socio-economic status (as well as the status of those around him) was astounding, and he had many insightful perspectives on the elite school he attends. His feelings about the incredible sense of homogeneity and lack of diversity in the school pervaded our entire interaction, and that got me thinking about other elite institutions in Chile. He said at one point that while his school did not offer financial aid (and thus eliminated the opportunity for anyone other than the wealthiest class to attend) other international schools in the area did, and were therefore slightly more diverse. I decided to put that theory to the test.
I focused my research on schools in Santiago, as it had the most robust collection of private institutions, and it’s considered a metropolitan hub. In Santiago, it seems that there are several categories of schools: British, American, International, Catholic, etc. Because of the large number of schools in the city, I dedicated my research to those schools for which I found the most information.
An alarming discovery I immediately made was the incredible difficulty in finding any information about tuition or financial aid. Unlike Colby’s webpage, which offers a comprehensive breakdown of the cost of attending the school, as well as how to apply for financial assistance, I found nothing other than “inquire at school” when it came to yearly education costs. To see if this was a high school versus university/college phenomenon, I looked up the high school I’d gone to in California, as well as several private elite institutions on the East Coast. All had a tab on “affordability” or “financial aid.” That got me wondering if this is a cultural differentiation, or that Chilean schools don’t have information about aid because it doesn’t exist…
Despite this little hiccup, I kept investigating the elite schools in the area. The first I focused on was the Craighouse School, a British, pre-K through year 12 IB (international baccalaureate) based school. Interestingly, the school has an English curriculum through 6th grade, after which the primary language transitions to Spanish through graduation. While the upper level school promotes the IB program it also has preparatory courses for the PSU, the local Chilean college entrance exams. I wondered if this switch in language would attract a wider Chilean population, as opposed to only international students. Perhaps cost isn’t the only factor in considering potential for diversity.
The second British school I looked at was The International Preparatory School (TIPS), which has a curriculum based on the National Curriculum for England and Wales. Because the primary and middle schools are accredited by the Chilean Ministry of Education, while the high school follows the British system and is recognized by the University of Cambridge as an exam center, students can go on to take the As and A-level exams in England. On their webpage, they boast their “global capacity,” because their accreditations and connections to several universities in England “set their students apart.” Thus, this came across to me as a school with a largely non-Chilean student population.
The next school I looked at was the International School Nido De Aguilas (Nido). Nido is a K-12 school taught primarily in English, with a combined American and Chilean curriculum. Graduates from this school can earn three separate diplomas: U.S., Chilean, and IB. Because of this diversity, I assume that this school would appeal to the widest group of individuals.
Finally, I found Santiago College to be particularly interesting. A private pre-K through 12 institution founded in 1880, the school boasts it’s primarily Chilean student body. While American Methodist missionaries founded it, the school combines the Chilean national curriculum with the IB program.
Through this research, I found several similarities that I thought were quite interesting, and tied in nicely with the discussions we’ve been having in class. For one, older schools boast their founding date, while newer schools have a tendency to bury it in the subtext, or at the very least downplay its importance. Despite the origins of the school (i.e. British, Chilean, American, etc.), all of the school mission statements and school aims emphasize their cultivation of a “global thinker,” which I’m beginning to understand is a rather elitist aim. Finally, in tandem with the global citizenship aim, all of the schools ran on the International Baccalaureate (IB) program, which was created with the intention of creating students ready for the global workplace.
All in all, I think that the student I interviewed had an interesting and incredibly eloquent outlook on his position in society. In addition to his own position, he seemed aware of the position of peers and his school as a whole. Through the research I’ve done about the international schools in Santiago, I think that he was quite correct in assuming many of them are quite similar in demographic and ideology. That begs the question, are these elite school unique to Chile, or are there aspects that are generalizable to all elite academic institutions globally? In other words, what parts of a school are unique to their culture, and what homogeneity does a certain level of elite-ness require? I’ll be looking into that from here on out…