Joseph Farrell analyzes the origins and consequences of Salvador Allende’s ill-fated attempt to create a National Unified School (ENU). It evolved through lengthy debates between Marxian Socialists and moderate Radicals within the Popular Unity (UP). The government announced the plan in March 1973, after midterm congressional elections had split Chile into two increasingly hostile camps. The proposal called for the integration of: (1) all levels and types of primary and secondary schools; (2) schools with their communities; and (3) classroom education with workplace experience. The UP claimed that this reform would make education more egalitarian, nationalistic, and productive.
Rapid politicization prevented any objective discussion of the proposal. Just as the government oversold the ENU as a victory for socialist revolution, so its adversaries resorted to polemics in defense of the family and religion. The opposition denounced the project as a Marxist-Leninist, totalitarian, unconstitutional assault on liberty, pluralism, and private schools. For the first time, military officers, as parents, publicly criticized UP policies. That firestorm convinced Allende to retreat from the proposal by April 1973.
The author concludes that the government put forward such a poorly designed and timed initiative because of the infighting and incoherence endemic to that multiparty administration. Although a low priority for the UP, the ENU enflamed ideological and class conflict. It alienated large segments of the church, the middle class, and the armed forces. Farrell’s blow-by-blow account of that controversy is very persuasive, but he exaggerates when he assigns it major importance in the downfall of the regime. More fundamental battles over property, privilege, and power doomed the UP.
Farrell’s well-written, balanced treatment of this episode rests on a solid base of documents and interviews. It also grows out of his experience as a participant observer in Allende’s Ministry of Education. The ENU fracas is well placed in the political context of the 1970-73 period, following closely the interpretations of Arturo Valenzuela. This book underscores the extreme sensitivity of educational issues in any society, especially one polarized over irreconcilable visions of national development.
