Adapting to student protests (and learning in the process)

Student protests unquestionably affect the everyday routine of Chilean public high

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continuing. According to Mardones and Yevenes (2018), students attending schools in the Santiago Municipality missed as many as 316 school days between 2016 and 2018 because of occupations. Less examined are the different ways in which student protests affect the citizenship education practices with which students engage at their schools. In the process of adapting to the Chilean student contentious politics landscape, new avenues of citizenship education are opened, while others are closed down.

Student protests alter the “normal” daily life of Chilean public high schools even before any particular protest starts. After more than a decade since the Revolución Pingüina, these events are not unknown or surprising to school actors anymore, and students and teachers readily adapt their school routines in anticipation of upcoming protests. I learned this during one of my first weeks at the Liceo Muñoz Hermosilla, while attending a 2M Language and Communication class. Juanelo, the teacher, was writing in the whiteboard the list of books the students were supposed to read during the year, including pieces by Chilean novelists as well as others by Latin-American and Spanish authors. “Como mínimo vamos a leer esas obras,” Juanelo said to the students once he finished writing down the list, and then added: “Estoy dejando dos fuera por

si acaso, ustedes saben que a veces los años son un poco moviditos.”183 _{Students asked about the} titles of the books they were not going to read, but they did not seem to find anything strange about their teacher’s assessment. Most of them had attended the Liceo Muñoz Hermosilla for more than a year by then and had learned how student protests could affect the regular school calendar. These high schoolers’ previous experiences allowed them to anticipate when protests were going to occur and to modify their behavior accordingly. “Ya las verá”184 _{Jordan told me on}

183 _{At least we will read all these books. I am leaving out two others, just in case. You know, sometimes our school}

years are a little shaky.

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one cold April morning when I asked him about the Liceo Muñoz Hermosilla internal protests that I had heard so much about. According to him, I just had to wait until June, when everything would get “más intenso.”185 _{His friend Lebron, standing right next to him, confessed to me he} preferred to skip school on the days he thought a demonstration would happen, “porque sé que

no vamos a hacer nada [en clases].”186

At the Liceo Muñoz Hermosilla, student protests also could affect the citizenship education practices that were part of the regular school routine, especially those examined in Chapter 3. Indeed, if classes were not being taught, it was difficult for students to engage in citizenship education practices directly related to their Citizenship or HGSS classes. This situation was more common in the case of occupations – as already noted – and also during internal protests, which disrupted the students’ daily schedule and could end up in violent acts and several students skipping school. Strikes also had significant effects for these citizenship education practices, because all regular school activities had to be canceled once one of these protests was in effect. There were no exceptions to this rule. In May, Leonor had scheduled a field trip for 2M students to visit a historic Dominican Order Convent. She wanted the students to appreciate the religious art and architecture displayed there, and to connect this experience with the role of the Church during the Spanish Colony and the broader impact of religion over Chilean society until the present. Leonor started planning the field trip in the end of March since the historical building’s availability for visits was limited. She also had to fill out and file several forms with the school administrators and the municipality and obtain the parents’ formal

permissions for their kids to leave the school with her. On May 29, the student government Executive Board decided to call a vote for a reflexive strike that, if accepted, would happen on

185 _{More intense.}

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May 31, the same day the field trip was scheduled. While the voting process was still ongoing, 2M students met for their HGSS class, and Federico asked Leonor what would happen with the field trip. Without a doubt, the teacher answered that she could not interfere in their decisions as students, and that, if they decided to strike, she would have to see if there was any way to reschedule the field trip or find another solution. In the end, the majority of the Liceo Muñoz

Hermosilla students voted in favor of the reflexive strike, and the field trip was canceled and

never rescheduled.

In the process of adapting to the ongoing student protests, public high schools like the

Liceo Muñoz Hermosilla were also able to provide new citizenship education opportunities for

their students. How this school adapted to street demonstrations was a clear example of this. By order of the Mayor, students attending schools depending on the Santiago Municipality were allowed to participate in street demonstrations only if two conditions were met. The first one was that the demonstration was authorized by the city government. The second one was that the student was authorized to attend demonstrations by his or her parents.xxviii _{In order to expedite} this process, the Liceo Muñoz Hermosilla administrators produced particular artifacts called Demonstration IDs. Students received these IDs at the beginning of the school year if they presented a parent’s note authorizing them to participate in street demonstrations. When one of these demonstrations was scheduled, students were able to show these IDs at the school gate and to leave no more than an hour before the protest was supposed to begin. Since demonstrations usually started between 10 and 11 AM, several classrooms were half-empty by midmorning. Although the Mayor also ordered classes to continue normally during these days, few teachers complied with this mandate. For them, this was a pedagogical decision. Most classes in Chile follow a curriculum in which previous learnings are required in order to acquire new ones. This

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meant that continuing normally with their classes when most students were absent was not only unproductive for these teachers but would require them to repeat themselves once all the students were back. Instead, during these days, they preferred to ask students to practice some of their previous learnings or invited them to discuss current events, including the student protest they had not attended. In this way, protests like these provided new opportunities for citizenship education even for those high schoolers who were not engaging directly with street

demonstrations.