The school has posted its own manifesto on their website, talking about the improvements they wish to make as the school begins to approach its 100-year anniversary. I use this to compare it to ideas Elizabeth touched on in their work and how it relates to my findings. When the school was founded, its slogan, which remains to this day is, “We want to form young people who will be useful to the country and are trustworthy”. Immediately, we get the sense that Croft is educating students who will be useful and can be trusted in Chile. This is interesting considering the political history of Chile, as this slogan has existed through dictatorship and now democracy. I also find the “useful to the country” statement to be interesting as well as Croft is a British school where classes are taught in English. With the goal of Croft wanting to produce students who will be directly influencing the economy and political agenda of Chile, I am reminded of some ideas raised by Pierre Bourdieu. In The State Nobility, Bourdieu mentions the idea of circulation of capital. Croft is specifically using its name to give their students the best opportunity to build this institutionalized capital on top of embodied and objectified capital into positions of greater fields of power. I feel this ties nicely into Bourdieu’s discussion about mechanical and organic solidarity, and students while in schooling are navigating mechanical solidarity and work towards organic solidarity as they enter the workforce.

I also found the six points brought up in this manifesto to be quite interesting. I won’t go into them all but will pick out two that I feel most important to speak about. Essentially before I go into these two points, the school is aiming to evolve with the times, and doing that while being happy and creating students who follow the beliefs of Croft.

The first component I want to highlight from this manifesto is ” Rounded, Broad, Holistic”. The blurb along with these three words mentions how they want their students to be well rounded through academics, athletics, arts, and service. They believe that students who perform well in their extracurriculars will be performing well in their academics. To pull a quote from this blurb they say that ” a great performance on the Rugby field can directly help a pupil do well in the Maths Class”. I found this to be interesting as Elizabeth never noted an emphasis the school places on their extracurricular activities like this manifesto has done.

The second point I want to briefly talk about is “What do we remember as we grow older? The teacher that changed the trajectory of our lives.” The setting of Croft can only be so good if their faculty is not up to the standard they wish. Croft believes that careful recruitment and training of teachers is essential in growing a strong teaching foundation. Several students throughout our research criticized the teachers at Croft, often stating that they were very old, strict, and ran their classroom like a dictatorship. I would be curious to see if this were still the case at Croft as they have goals to enhance their teaching programs, but it is interesting to note how proud they are of their teachers given student interviews have had a sub-optimal experience with at least one teacher.