Chile: The Advantage of Proposed School Curriculum Reforms
By Andres Kogan Valderrama
HAVANA TIMES – Regarding the presentation of a proposal for the Update of Curricular Bases (from 1st to 12th grades) by the Ministry of Education of Chile, after a process that began in 2022, through a study, information gathering, and a pedagogical curricular congress, the need to approve this proposal becomes indispensable in the current times we are living.
I mention this because, although the next steps of the proposal must go through a public consultation and later be sent to the National Education Council, it seems to me that the importance of approving a proposal with these characteristics has not been given enough attention by the major media outlets.
The proposal addresses the significant challenges we face as a society and our relationship with Nature, which has shown us the current consequences of the economic, security, climate, and civilizational crises, highlighting the need and urgency to build more sustainable ways of living.
In response, this proposal strengthens students’ learning from a much more systemic and comprehensive perspective, through environmental, civic, and financial education that incorporates new information technologies, which are still seen more as a threat by educational establishments than as an opportunity.
Additionally, this curricular update responds to the mental health crisis we are facing, aggravated by the pandemic and all the fear and uncertainty it generated in everyone. An emphasis on socio-emotional development and communication skills, is fundamental in the current scenario for us to have greater trust in others and in ourselves.
Consequently, the goal is to promote a curriculum for life that allows us to generate not only broader learning but also to rescue existing diversity and consider the students’ own experiences in their environments, creating a school that contributes to the enormous challenges we currently face.
Therefore, it seems to me that this curricular update should not only be disseminated, discussed, and approved but also serve to promote future changes in the way we are living without sacrificing basic human rights and the minimum conditions of life on the planet in the name of economic growth, development, or revolution.
To achieve this, the school can play a much more active role than it is currently having, going far beyond certain basic academic content, allowing the development of life skills and a plural coexistence that enables us to relate differently and prepare for a different way of being and being together.
Let the curricular update become a relational update, and let schools be much more loving spaces where hope is sown and built within a historical moment that forces us to make a turn in every sense, within a context where individualism, pessimism, and denialism present themselves as an unmodifiable reality.
Only then can we transition towards happier, more empathetic societies intertwined with their environment, with our feet firmly on the ground, literally, and not outside of it as has been the case for centuries, behaving like true gods with feet of clay.