From the Struggle for Education to the Transformation of Society: Challenges and Hopes in the Chile of the 21st Century

We are three voices at a public university in northern Chile. This essay is about how social science take into account or ignore the current political tension produced by social movements against neoliberalism. We have three stories (student activist, student federation leader, and scholar in motion) that reveal the current state of public education in Chile, which has been determined by marketplace logic and neoliberalism. We discuss the relationship between the global crisis of capitalism and the fundamental role of education as an arena of critical thinking for the training of students and scholars committed to democracy and social justice. We believe that the current historical movement policy opens a possibility of achieving real democracy by confronting the commodification of life and fundamental rights.