Elite Education in Nineteenth-Century Chile Open Access

The elite of nineteenth-century Chile has traditionally been seen as disciplined, progressive, and industrious. Both Chilean and foreign scholars have generally accepted the argument that such essentially bourgeois characteristics underlay the nation’s unique political stability and economic prosperity. In fact, this pervasive view of Chilean history probably has some merit. To a remarkable extent, Chile’s gente decente, as the elite styled itself, was able to maintain internal discipline, preserve a degree of homogeneity, and achieve national political consensus through parliamentary government. How Chileans achieved the elite consolidation and political stability which their counterparts in neighboring states found so elusive is the subject of this essay.¹

Recent studies in social history suggest that elite formation is often not a random process but may in part proceed deliberately through formal socialization and education of youth. In countries such as England and the United States, where the state did not involve itself directly in civic education, private universities assumed these functions. One study, for example, argues persuasively that Harvard University consciously went about forging a coherent upper class in Boston through careful education and socialization of young men. Over generations, Harvard effectively refined and systematized the values of the Boston elite and encouraged it to perceive itself as a custodian of values on which an entire society rested.²

The Chilean case is noteworthy for the scope and duration of the government’s systematic effort at elite education. This task, and ultimately the task of creating an entire national political culture, was assigned to a secondary school, the Instituto Nacional.³

The Evolution and Structure of the Estado Docente

As early as 1811, Camilo Henríquez, as a member of Chile’s provisional government, presented a proposal to organize a national institute of higher learning, for which he deliberately selected the name Instituto Nacional because in 1795 the National Convention in Paris had established a National Institute to replace the abolished universities of the old regime. The proposal became reality when the government of José Miguel Carrera formally created the Instituto Nacional in 1813.⁴ Like its French counterpart, the Instituto was conceived as a modern alternative to the medieval university. In the school’s founding document, the Ordenanzas del Instituto Nacional, Interior Minister Juan Egaña—who more than anyone else was its true founder—observed that without education a modern society possessed neither “opinion, public spirit, nor the men to build the state.”⁵ Early national-period intellectuals such as Egaña, as well as politicians such as Bernardo O’Higgins, took a Hobbesian view of humanity in general and were looking for some way to train the “good individuals” who were needed to lead society.⁶ The government thus charged the Instituto with preparing priests, statesmen, and virtuous and useful citizens from all classes, a task which required the Instituto to operate in an innovative manner. Indeed, it functioned at one and the same time as a secondary school, a seminary, and a university until 1834, when the government created the independent Seminario Conciliar. The Instituto continued to offer university-level instruction until 1879 and in addition sponsored seminars and maintained public libraries for the ongoing education of the literate adult population. Evidently, the concept that lay behind the Instituto appealed to reformers throughout Spanish America, because it appeared often in the educational programs of other new republics.⁷

The Instituto’s first twenty years were difficult. It was closed by the Spanish during the reconquista in 1814 and not reopened until 1819 by O’Higgins.⁸ In the 1820s, it became so closely identified with conservative peluconismo that the rival pipiolos established a competing Liceo de Chile, and when possible they attached the Institute’s funding.⁹ In fact, through most of its history, the Instituto Nacional was at the eye of a political hurricane. Because of the centrality of education to nation building, each curriculum change was hotly debated, and the very concept of the “teaching state”—estado docente as it was known in Chile—was regularly attacked by those who did not direct it. Only in the early Portalean republic did the Instituto take its mature form.¹⁰

In the 1830s and 1840s, pelucones reaffirmed Egaña’s educational philosophy and committed themselves to creating an elite which the state would train for public service. The Constitution of 1833, which definitively laid the basis for an estado docente, provided for more than just the civic culture indoctrination of elite youth. However, the French educational philosophy, which the Chileans imported, assumed that education was chiefly an elite affair and did not divide the preparation for rule from education per se: the latter presumed the former, as had been the case in the classical world they so esteemed.¹¹ One of the principal critics of this approach, Domingo Sarmiento, charged that it was too expensive and also ineffective because it touched only a small percentage of the population directly. However, Sarmiento’s was a radical minority viewpoint.¹² For the victorious pelucones, survival of the new republic required the full support of a properly educated elite, and to this end the Instituto Nacional was to play a critical role.

That role was restricted to some extent, though at first not drastically, by the creation in 1843 of the Universidad de Chile, designed to function as an academy of scholars and a national board of education; it legally succeeded the Instituto Nacional as the center of the national educational experiment. Mariano Egaña, who carried the portfolio of the Ministerio de Justicia, Culto e Instrucción Pública, authored the change, which again drew inspiration from French pedagogical thought. Egaña believed the university was necessary to activate the estado docente clauses of the Constitution of 1833. Yet it was initially a nonteaching university, with two principal functions: it validated examinations and supported research. Under the new institutional structure, the president of Chile became the university’s chief patron, and the minister of public instruction served as its vice-patron. The government selected the rector, who served a determined number of years. With the assistance of the Consejo de la Universidad de Chile, also appointed by the government, the rector assumed a superintendency over all levels of education and thus fulfilled the constitutional requirements.¹³

The Universidad de Chile had five academic nonteaching faculties composed of thirty members each, as well as honorary and corresponding members. Incorporation into a university faculty required the presentation of a paper in an area of specialized knowledge, and the government designated those who were elected by the respective faculty members.¹⁴ Persons who made up the teaching faculty at the Instituto Nacional were not necessarily members of a university faculty, although given the small number of suitable personnel there was overlap.

A new position of delegado universitario was created in 1852, which further modified the structure of the Instituto Nacional and its relationship to the Universidad de Chile. Ignacio Domeyko, a noted scientist and educator, first held the post, which was designed to supervise the university-level courses taught at the Instituto Nacional and report to the Consejo de la Universidad.¹⁵ By the midnineteenth century, then, the Instituto Nacional had been legally reduced to a teaching institution which contemporary Chileans increasingly identified as a national preparatory school.

With the establishment of the university, the national educational system assumed its basic legal and institutional form, although it would expand considerably later in the century. Superficially it resembled a pyramid of interlocking institutions designed to provide inexpensive public instruction from primary through professional levels (Figure 1).

The capstone of the estado docente, the Universidad de Chile, was conceived (to reiterate) as an academy of scholars, and its Consejo de la Universidad functioned as a national board of education. At a second level were the Instituto Nacional, the Escuela Militar, and Seminario Conciliar, where the actual training of civilian, military, and clerical elites took place. Related to the Instituto Nacional, the government created a system of liceos, secondary schools for boys in provincial areas. At a third level and quite separate from elite educational institutions, the government addressed instruction for the population at large by maintaining vocational, normal, technical, and adult education facilities and sponsoring other schools for personnel enlisted in the military. At the base of this third part was a national network of free primary schools for both sexes, which almost inevitably was less extensive in practice than in its theoretical design. For students who wished to supplement the basic course in primary education without advancing to degree-granting programs, the State provided escuelas superiores that offered three additional years of intermediate instruction and were located in larger provincial towns.¹⁶

Like many contemporary European theorists, and perhaps because of his exposure to the British public school system, Andrés Bello—the Venezuelan humanist who became first rector of the Universidad de Chile and served as guiding spirit of the estado docente system until his death in 1865 —gave secondary education a position of special importance. Of course, secondary schooling in nineteenth-century Chile should not be confused with a contemporary U.S. high school. According to the reglas, students matriculated between 12 and 15 years old, but enrollment records indicate the entrance age could vary in both directions, to as low as 10 and as high as 17, so the ages of sixth-year students were at times as high as 25 or as low as 13. As in the European model, the education essentially combined high school material with that of the first two years or so of a present-day liberal arts curriculum.

At the primary level Chilean education was to impart basic skills and rudimentary moral lessons, as most students were not expected to advance to the secondary level. In effect, Bello argued that the problems of Latin America could only be solved by a competent leadership class which would bring the masses through a necessarily lengthy tutelage. Bello’s disparaging view of the masses was at the heart of his disputes with Sarmiento and others who advocated reform through broadly based primary education.¹⁷ In Chile the subordination of primary to secondary education was constantly reinforced in the normal schools, whose students came from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Such schools were closely controlled by the state and taught prospective primary teachers that a grasp of basic skills and respect for authority were sufficient for most Chileans.¹⁸

Bello and his collaborators regarded university instruction as professional schooling which would provide very specific training for small numbers of young men seeking careers in law, medicine, theology, or engineering. Enrollments in the professional or university division of the Instituto increased during the second half of the century but were always considerably lower than in the secondary division, where the important work of value formation occurred (see Table 1).

The Instituto Nacional after 1843

Since the university delegated many functions to the Instituto Nacional, it effectively sat astride much of the national educational project. Thus by a decree of 1843 the Instituto exercised broad supervisory powers over the network of liceos, subordinate secondary schools located in the provinces. The correspondence of Instituto rectors verifies that as members of and in consultation with, the Consejo de la Universidad they suggested policy and selected curricula, textbooks, and personnel for the liceos, which numbered 17 by 1872.¹⁹

The Institute’s reach was not limited to the public secondary system. When Bello and the Consejo de la Universidad made the standards of the Instituto national standards, it chose humanities texts for the Escuela Militar and the Seminario Conciliar.²⁰ The Institute Nacional further expanded its role in public instruction in 1860 when the government created the Inspección de Educación, an agency to supervise primary instruction, under direction of the Universidad de Chile. The state-supported normal schools then began to use textbooks suggested by the Instituto. In addition, the Institute’s rector became a member of the national selection committee which controlled admissions to the normal schools.²¹ In the same decade the Instituto inaugurated an adult evening division. The rector’s correspondence makes it clear that his office closely monitored the new division, which offered practical education to workers in addition to some humanities courses.²²

The 1843 decree also empowered the Institute to administer yearly comprehensive secondary examinations throughout the nation, so that private colegios found it expedient to adopt official curricula in order to promote and graduate their students. Instituto faculty, in fact, controlled admission to the university division itself by regulating the granting of the prerequisite bachiller degree until 1872, when a Conservative minister of public instruction rescinded this authority.²³

The Instituto’s influence extended downward as well. Because it found that most primary school graduates could not meet its admission requirements, the rector suggested and the Consejo de la Universidad approved the creation of anexos, primary divisions attached to the liceos. They operated for some two decades (1850-70); in part they constituted a feeder system which groomed candidates for the Instituto and effectively segregated primary instruction by social class.²⁴

An analysis of detailed annual budgets of the Ministerio de Instrucción Pública for the years 1845-85 provides one measure of the Instituto’s importance in national priorities (see Tables 2 and 3). During this period the share of the entire education budget assigned to this one school fluctuated between 8 and 18 percent; it was consistently the largest single item in the funding package. Occasionally special allocations appeared. Between 1845 and 1850, the Instituto received an additional 211,000 pesos over and above its regular budget appropriation. In 1852 it received another 53,500 pesos in this fashion; in 1858, 50,000; in 1862, 20,000; and in 1879, 55,000. In three of these cases the additional pesos were for modernization of facilities; in the last case, for a special library acquisition.²⁵

Statistics on expenditure per student also provide a useful index of the Instituto’s position in the system (see Table 4). During the third quarter of the nineteenth century, a period for which figures are available, national funding at the primary level averaged 10 pesos per student annually, while the Instituto regularly expended an average of 85 pesos per student every year. This funding pattern was a matter of national policy during the entire second half of the century and received consistent bipartisan legislative support.

A series of astute rectors channeled national funds into several principal areas. Above all, their correspondence suggests that library development was a paramount institutional priority. By the end of the nineteenth century the Instituto’s library was generally regarded as one of the major collections on the continent. The correspondence books included hundreds of acquisition lists and purchase orders. Chilean diplomatic representatives abroad were enlisted to secure foreign-language publications: in 1851, for example, the Chilean consul in Washington was commissioned to purchase the complete works of William H. Prescott; his counterpart in Spain was asked to copy Chilean colonial documentation in the Archivo General de Indias.²⁶ A succession of rectors likewise maintained extensive correspondence with foreign publishing houses and literary journals. Diego Barros Arana, rector from 1863 to 1873, was a correspondent of Jared Sparks, of the North American Review.²⁷ But far and away the most active and productive correspondence was with Paris publishers.²⁸ The library which resulted still contains great numbers of French translations of English and German science, literature, and philosophy, as well as works of French scholars and writers.

One of the Instituto’s goals was to establish the preeminent Americana collection in the hemisphere. For this purpose, the school’s library staff used a series of international agricultural and industrial expositions sponsored by the Chilean government to make contact with book distributors and officials of other American nations. It also established periodical exchange programs with government agencies of the United States, Mexico, Central America, and Paraguay.²⁹

The Chilean government faithfully supported what was, for its time, an unprecedented library development program. It periodically authorized special major acquisitions, such as the large Americana collection of the Argentine bibliophile Gregorio Beeche. And in 1879, after the purchase of this collection had called further attention to the library, the Ministerio de Instrucción Pública commissioned the Institute’s former rector, Diego Barros Arana, to study library management in Europe.³⁰

Thanks to all these efforts the collection grew steadily. An 1851 report to the minister of public instruction stated that the Instituto’s library contained 1,200 titles.³¹ In his first annual report as rector in 1864, Barros Arana stated that it held over 5,000 volumes.³² A catalog prepared under his direction in 1890 contains 30,000 titles.³³ By the end of the century the Instituto library counted over 100,000 volumes, and was generally regarded as superior to the Biblioteca Nacional and to most other collections in South America.³⁴

A second major area of Instituto expenditure was faculty development. Instituto faculty members constituted an elite, paid more than their liceo counterparts and many times more than ordinary school teachers. Between 1840 and 1885, teachers’ salaries in the elementary system ranged from 144 to 300 pesos per year. The average elementary salary for the period was 240 pesos. (Large elementary schools also employed teachers’ aides, ayudantes, who received 96 pesos per year.) Although salaries were adjusted for the high cost of living in Coquimbo, Atacama, and several other regions, they were generally low throughout the nineteenth century, and as ministry officials concluded that men would not work for such low wages, they in large part made public elementary instruction the province of women.³⁵ By contrast, Instituto and liceo faculty who taught in the elementary anexos received 400 pesos annually throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. During the same period liceo faculty teaching at the secondary level earned between 400 and 700 pesos per course, or ramo. And faculty of the Instituto proper received from 800 to 1,400 pesos yearly.³⁶ Notwithstanding one abortive legislative attempt to equalize salaries in order to improve instruction in the provincial liceos, the flagship mentality prevailed through the century. The state regularly justified the differential in salaries as necessary to attract excellence to the Instituto—excellence which would ultimately radiate throughout the system. The minister of public instruction argued further that, although the salaries were above the national average, Instituto instructors were underpaid by European standards.³⁷

Not only was the Instituto Nacional salary scale higher than that of other schools, but a national bonus and incentive system adopted in 1843 generally worked to the advantage of its faculty. Ramón Briseño, a writer and a professor of philosophy, for example, received a bonus equivalent to two years’ salary for the translation of literature textbooks. In 1871 Barros Arana was awarded a bonus for publishing textbooks in national history, geography, and literature which equalled twelve years’ salary.³⁸

The Instituto’s efforts to recruit and reward faculty were closely interrelated with its facilities development. Instituto rectors soon concluded that the recruitment of talented faculty, particularly the foreign faculty thought essential to its science programs, depended on the existence of modern laboratories and equipment. The school therefore devoted large portions of its budget to scientific instrumentation, maps, globes, anatomical models, and related equipment.³⁹ Most of these supplies were ordered from foreign sources: classroom furniture from the United States, laboratory equipment from Germany, pianos from England, and other equipment from France.⁴⁰

An 1833 legislative resolution stated that in view of “the central place occupied by the Instituto in the nation it should be provided comfortable quarters.”⁴¹ In fact, the Instituto steadily expanded and renovated its quarters throughout the century. During the four decades studied, the school relocated three times, always to larger, more ambitious facilities.⁴²

The Education of a Civilian Elite

There was little agreement on the specific content of education until Bello assumed the rectorship of the university in 1843 and, from a variety of unrelated courses, fashioned a classic preprofessional humanities curriculum that became the basic course of study of the Instituto Nacional. The objective was to ground students in Latin, Spanish language, history, mathematics, and religion over a period of six years. In 1860, this curriculum was expanded to include additional work in philosophy, history, geography, experimental science, modern languages, and art and music. Over the following years, practical courses in drafting, accounting, and business arithmetic, and compulsory composition classes at all levels were adopted. Clearly, however, the school’s original emphasis on liberal education remained intact.⁴³

During the 1860s and 1870s, the Instituto also adopted important pedagogical and administrative reforms. Curriculum and instructional issues were matters of constant debate in the Consejo de la Universidad, and these discussions resulted in a move toward improved teaching. The first notable reform was an abandonment of recitation in favor of teaching to develop analytical skills. In 1864, the school began requiring that instructors specialize in two related disciplines, rather than teach in six or seven different subject areas. At the same time that the Instituto encouraged greater rigor in the classroom, it steadily raised standards for admission and ended automatic promotion. During this generally liberal period the Instituto Nacional stirred additional controversy by ending religious requirements such as confession and attendance at mass.⁴⁴

It is clear from the records of the Instituto that rectors were fully aware of the relationship between improvement of teaching and the quality of the teaching faculty. In an 1847 letter to President Manuel Bulnes, Rector Salvador Sanfuentes reviewed hiring policies with special reference to a controversial mathematics appointment. A candidate had to have fundamental understanding of all the higher sciences, the rector noted, because his function at the Instituto was not merely to teach specific classes—in his case introductory mathematics—but to serve students as a resource person on questions pertaining to science.⁴⁵

By law, the first stage in appointing a new faculty member was the publication of a vacancy notice and the scheduling of oposiciones—oral and written examinations. A terna emerged from this process and was then submitted to the Consejo, the minister of public instruction, and finally the president of Chile for approval. A good example of how the review process worked occurred in 1847. In March of that year a position in literature and history became vacant, and Jacinto Chacón and Juan Bello, both talented young writers, prepared for the examination. The selection committee gave them 48 hours to prepare a written essay on epic poetry and an oration on the age of Louis XIV. On the basis of the oral presentation, the committee recommended that Bello be hired. Perhaps personal politics played a role in hiring the university rector’s son rather than one of his intellectual adversaries, but the written explanation for the choice dwelled on the candidates’ teaching skills. Both candidates had demonstrated great intellectual ability, but Bello, the committee stated, would be the better teacher. His essay was concise and well constructed; he had explained the nature of epic poetry clearly, and he gave an adequate number of examples from classical and modern literature, while he noted the influence of history on theme selection and style. But in addition, by his oral performance, he showed that he had a clear delivery and was well suited for teaching young students.⁴⁶

By 1870 the school largely relied on full-time faculty, for whom scholarship and teaching were a primary, if not exclusive, commitment. But no system was perfect. To counteract faculty absenteeism, rectors from the 1860s compiled attendance books (libros de inasistencias), which instructors were required to sign. Chronic offenders were reported to the Consejo de la Universidad, which then recommended disciplinary action. The council also ordered rectors to refuse “private business” and other similar excuses as justifications for absenteeism.⁴⁷

Informal procedures inevitably played a part in the recruitment of faculty. There is ample evidence that Instituto staff carefully surveyed the student body for prospective faculty members and that top students were groomed for teaching positions. In fact, by the last third of the century, the majority of the faculty members were themselves alumni. This recruitment system also extended downward into the liceos. Almost without exception provincial liceo faculty members were graduates of the Instituto. The best-known examples were Valentín Letelier and the Lagarrigue brothers, who after attending the Instituto went on to the liceo at Copiapó. Indeed, under a program for training of faculty established in 1843, selected provincial students attended the Instituto at government expense on the condition that they return to teach in a regional liceo for a specified term.⁴⁸

Although it is difficult to assess the social origins of the Instituto’s faculty, it appears that they generally came from upper-class families or were members of the impoverished gentry, such as Manuel Montt, Antonio Varas, and Miguel and Gregorio Amunátegui. Each attended the Instituto on scholarship; all four joined its teaching faculty while studying law in the university section.⁴⁹ Instituto faculty, then, belonged to a narrow circle, as did liceo instructors to a lesser extent. Already members of the social elite, they were carefully selected in a system which placed great emphasis on the honing of desirable standards. The qualities prized in Instituto faculty (and passed on to students) included sobriety, caution, diligence, and commitment to constitutional government. Moreover, these essentially bourgeois attributes, and the goals of public education generally, were not subject to partisan dispute. A conservative stalwart, Montt, found no conflict in appointing Miguel Luis Amunátegui and José V. Lastarria, both liberals, to the faculty.⁵⁰

Instituto faculty members had three specific charges. First, they were expected to teach reasoning and analytical skills. Second, they were to serve as tutors to the general public by participating in open forums and by publishing useful, readily accessible information. Through the nineteenth century, most of the national intelligentsia of Chile were or had been professors at the Instituto, and they inevitably served in this second capacity. Waldo Aguayo’s 1863 description of the Instituto faculty as “una sociedad de sabios,” with professional and personal ties to academic circles outside Chile, is essentially true.⁵¹ The 1882 faculty (composed of appointees of highly partisan Liberal and Conservative forces which controlled the education ministry during the 1860s and 1870s) clearly conformed to this profile. Of the 49 members, 35 had graduated from the Instituto. Of the remaining 14, 6 were foreigners who completed their education before immigrating, and 1 was the son of a German immigrant doctor who returned to Germany for schooling. Two more were priests educated in the Seminario Conciliar; 1 was too old to have attended the Instituto; and the remaining 4 had attended private liceos in Chile. All but 5 had extensive bibliographies, which included scholarly treatises, journal articles, and textbooks, and 25 had active careers in journalism.⁵²

Finally, faculty members were expected to act as agents of socialization. They were to develop close ties with students, invite them into their homes, and permit them to participate in tertulias. Diego Barros Arana and the Amunáteguis hosted weekly tertulias in their homes and asked selected students to attend. Gabriel René-Moreno, the Bolivian historian and essayist, sponsored a weekly literary tertulia in his apartment at the Instituto. Other faculty members organized special tutorial sessions or sponsored student publications, literary societies, and contests. Not surprisingly, students occasionally married the daughters of faculty members.⁵³

Every society makes some provision for civic education or political socialization, the codification of attitudes toward political life, and the definition of the role of the individual within the system; and Chile was obviously no exception. The 1813 charter of the Instituto had expressly charged it with creating a “moral and civic education for Chileans.”⁵⁴ Such training typically involves inculcating a body of shared values, thereby encouraging political accommodation and preservation of an existing order. The civic function of the Instituto Nacional was thus to produce a political elite—and ultimately a citizenry—that would implicitly accept constitutional law and parliamentary government.

The “social function” of the Instituto, as contemporaries referred to it, was widely understood and discussed throughout the period. In an 1843 speech Bello maintained that a properly educated elite was a precondition for general citizen education. General education required “good teachers, good books and work habits.” And the Instituto was the “fountain from which general education flowed.”⁵⁵ In a carefully reasoned lecture before faculty and students two years later, Rector Antonio Varas contended that, if every nation had a moral center, the Instituto Nacional had that role in Chile. Varas continued that “the very essence of Chile emanated from the Instituto and radiated through the entire society.” The transmission of civil culture, however, was a gradual process for Varas, and concepts originating in the Instituto would become the “basis of what Chileans intuitively believed and the touchstones by which they organized their individual and collective lives . . . after several generations.”⁵⁶ Even if the process moved at an almost glacial pace, Varas argued that the Instituto’s “indelible imprint” could already be found in students of the humblest provincial liceo. He believed that investment in the Instituto was the best possible hope for “socializing an entire society.”⁵⁷

Varas, an Instituto graduate who served as professor and rector, both in liceos and at the Instituto, was himself a product of the system and a disciple of Bello. Moreover, his argument for the role of education in political socialization on a national scale was constantly refined and discussed by other Chilean educators, who reaffirmed their duty “to introduce man to his obligations to God and society.”⁵⁸ When, in 1853, Ramón Briseño addressed the Institutos student body in the presence of President Montt and several ministers, he noted that because most Chileans could not attend the school it was the patriotic responsibility of its students to become mentors to the masses. Graduates were to “take the reins of state and drive Chile into the future.” The Instituto was an “engine of a great social machine.”⁵⁹

Paradoxically, the elite bias of the system became an even more pressing priority in the last decades of the period, at the same time that primary and vocational education were expanding rapidly as a proportion of total educational activity. During these years the Ministerio de Instrucción Públicablica came under the control of liberal positivists who saw societies as organic wholes through which influences could be transmitted readily. In 1877 Miguel Luis Amunátegui, minister of public instruction, maintained that, with elite secondary education well established, a base had been laid for a new emphasis on education for the masses. But the role of elite institutions was now more important than ever, because their influence extended widely through the system of elementary schools.⁶⁰

There was, in any case, a remarkable continuity in Chilean educational thinking. Early in the republican era Chilean leaders had seized on the connection between curriculum and value formation. In this they were not unlike counterparts elsewhere: in the United States, for example, Benjamin Rush believed that correctly designed curricula were essential to citizen training and like other Federalists went so far as to advocate the establishment of a national university in Washington to train statesmen.⁶¹ In Chile, however, the pursuit of civic objectives through education remained haphazard until the 1830s, when the state first began to codify a body of officially sanctioned values. The crowning achievement of the process was the curriculum that Bello devised (as already mentioned) in his capacity as university rector. He included the disciplines that he felt would inculcate habits of diligence, precision, and concentration and would lead to the development of self-discipline, a prerequisite for self-government and political cooperation. Latin and Spanish grammar could only be mastered through perseverance and attention to detail; by studying them, students developed a sense of logic, good study habits, and analytical skills. A thorough understanding of Spanish, moreover, engendered the eloquence required of statesmen. History taught social reasoning. Religion reminded students they lived in association with others and curbed the sense of individuality. In sum, the disciplines themselves were vehicles for teaching values.⁶²

The Consejo de la Universidad, headed by Bello until 1865, ruled on most curriculum matters, and evidence suggests that it plotted a deliberately conservative course. Yet the conservatism of Bello, Portales, and Montt had a secular ring to it. Whenever the estado docente attacked or limited the church’s role, the clerical press attacked—first when the state created independent seminaries, and later when Liberals limited the religious content of education. In the 1870s, the proclerical Conservative press fought vigorously all attempts at modernization and secularization. But the Instituto Nacional was so closely identified with the pelucón tradition that curriculum decisions were regularly attacked in the Liberal press, too. Not until 1860, when Liberals assumed direction of the educational bureaucracy and saw the advantages the teaching state concept offered them for attacking clerical privilege, did they change their position, and then not all of them. In the end, some Liberals and Conservatives joined together under the banner of freedom of education and parental decision making, which included an attack on compulsory elementary education, to end the estado docente.⁶³

One of the classic confrontations of Latin American intellectual history also turned on a question of Instituto curriculum. In 1844 Sarmiento, in his famous debate with Bello on the writing of history, attacked Bello’s emphasis on grammar and Latin as producing pedantic, dull-witted students. Bello, who hoped to educate a generation of cautious administrators and legislators, perhaps did not find the charge wide of the mark. The recognized function of Latin in the secondary curriculum was for Latin grammar to provide mental discipline, while Roman literature provided moral discipline.⁶⁴ In an 1856 essay Sarmiento returned to the attack, this time criticizing the Instituto’s social role. Given his bias toward primary instruction, Sarmiento felt that secondary education should have been a private rather than a public responsibility. Above all, he felt public secondary education was a poor allocation of resources. And because the Instituto was so well funded, it discouraged private competitors. However, even at this relatively early date, Sarmiento correctly perceived that every branch of government was so dominated by Instituto graduates that efforts to disestablish the school or diminish its role were doomed to failure.⁶⁵

Another constant from the founding days of the Instituto was the commitment to train a useful elite; generations of students were taught that they had a special obligation to the state. Manuel Montt, during his rectorship, cautioned graduates that their first duty was to the state which had educated them.⁶⁶ A major goal of the Instituto, in fact, was to wean students from private concerns and instill an overriding responsibility to the nation. Years later, Amunátegui added a late nineteenth-century corollary to the argument: the graduates’ responsibility to the nation was to promote Chile’s economic modernization.

Many of the Instituto’s more forthright efforts at political socialization occurred in special courses designed for that purpose. During the 1813-29 period a course entitled Elocuencia was organized and taught by Juan Egaña. He used the constitution and other public documents as texts from which he drew moral lessons to demonstrate proper citizenship.⁶⁷ By the 1840s, however, rectors had concluded that the best vehicle for political indoctrination, for educating “citizens and magistrates,’’ was the study of history. Under Bello’s influence, the Instituto staff consistently linked past and present and found solutions for contemporary problems in Chilean history.

History, indeed, became the linchpin of the curriculum, to be plumbed for lessons useful to future leaders. Moreover, the message which Chilean educators began to purvey as early as the 1830s and ’40s not coincidentally has remained the orthodox view of national history. If one reads the reports of the Ministerio de Instrucción Pública or the essays and public addresses of educators, one finds a consistent argument that Chile was a nation of sturdy yeomen whose ancestors had been tempered by adversity and poverty, people who were pragmatic and progressive. In the course of these developments, Chileans had further acquired a gift for representative government and peaceful solutions to political and social problems. Such ideas became part of a positive civic culture that was eventually instilled into the middle and popular sectors as well and strongly reinforced the ruling elite’s position.

In the 1860s history was expanded to include mandatory courses in modern European and comparative American as well as Chilean history, and faculty members began to write appropriate texts. As Allen Woll has demonstrated in his study of nineteenth-century Chilean history textbooks, history was used by the state to teach nationalism and secularism at all levels. This was certainly true of both Barros Arana’s Compendio de historia de la América and Amunátegui’s Historia de Chile, which were used in every liceo and normal school in the country.⁶⁸ Instituto professors similarly larded convocation addresses with historical parables. Amunátegui, for example, attacked inefficient bureaucracy as an unfortunate legacy from the colonial past. And when Araucanian Indian raids on southern frontier settlements became a national problem, he invoked not only positivist evolutionary theory but Chilean history to condemn them.⁶⁹

Political socialization occurred through faculty example as well. Although professionalization of teaching was a goal throughout the century, it was never fully achieved, and faculty members often combined teaching with political officeholding: of the 49-member Instituto faculty of 1882, 75 percent held elected or appointed office. Professors frequently participated in partisan politics and engaged in political journalism. Inevitably, therefore, politics entered the classroom.⁷⁰

The Instituto had been embroiled in partisan politics throughout much of its history. In the 1820s pipiolo liberals saw it as a conservative bastion and established the Liceo de Chile, directed by José Mora, as an alternative for their sons. The pelucón victory in 1829 ensured the Instituto’s continuity, although Bello’s policies would modify its political function, encouraging bipartisan elite socialization as against overt partisanship. By 1860, the faculty represented every position in the political spectrum. Through the 1880s, however, the parties, especially the Conservatives, charged that the Instituto recruited members from their competitors.⁷¹ The presence of high-ranking government officials on the faculty also tended to make politics a classroom staple. Alumni later wrote, for example, that during Amunátegui’s first term as a cabinet minister he regularly reported to his classes on the day-to-day functioning of the state.⁷² The classroom setting permitted students, many of whom would enter government service, to sharpen their rhetorical skills and their debate tactics. More importantly, the Instituto provided them with a place where they learned to respect or at least to tolerate the political beliefs of others and the right of individuals to disagree.

A major stated objective of the Instituto was to train a civilian elite. To what extent did its alumni actually staff official positions? Appointment to government posts in nineteenth-century Chile depended partly on a candidate’s merit, but social status, family connections, political party membership, and wealth were perhaps more important variables. While appointment and promotion patterns are not always easy to discern, the relationship of an Instituto diploma to officeholding is clear. The graduate was not only well prepared, he was able to draw on extensive networks both within government and without to advance his fortunes.

For Chileans the relationship between the Instituto and the civil bureaucracy was twofold. First, the school began as a part of the nation’s republican order, and it became emblematic, correctly or not, of a movement toward mobility based on merit. Its students were perceived as highly talented, and if the Instituto did not represent them as a sort of aristocracy, they were certainly an aristocracy of talent. Second, Chileans believed that an Instituto education imparted useful knowledge, which would be valuable to the entire nation. The civil servant groomed by the Instituto was one who had mastered a body of selected subject matter and skills. Yet, while contemporaries agreed without exception that alumni occupied a large number of government positions, concrete measures of the interrelationship are elusive. Instituto publications treat highly successful graduates at great length but provide no systematic information on alumni placement.

In 1870 the Chilean government convoked an assembly of notables to amend the 1833 constitution. An apparently representative cross-section of the nation’s civilian elite, the 109-member body included merchants, hacendados, journalists, politicians, and clerics. All political parties were represented, as were residents of both the capital and provinces. The membership spanned several political generations, including old patriots from the 1820s, important middle-aged pelucones and liberals, as well as youthful political apprentices. By comparing its membership roster with Instituto graduation lists, one gains a quick measure of the school’s importance to national life. In total, 67 percent of the group graduated from the Instituto Nacional. If we eliminate those too old to have attended the Instituto, this total increases to over 70 percent. Of those who did not attend the Instituto, five were educated in other state-financed schools essentially under the Instituto’s control, two were priests who attended the national seminary, and three attended the Escuela Militar or had received other military training. Only six members of the assembly were educated abroad or in Catholic liceos.⁷³

In sum, the Instituto Nacional imparted civic virtues to elite youth. To achieve this end, it went beyond simple socialization to provide direct political education. School regulations, curricula, and learning methods converged to encourage a specified behavior. Elite youth needed to become “politically associated,” with strong ties and responsibilities to the community. After all, they were destined to decide and formulate public policy. Through civic education they were made worthy of their liberty, capable of bearing the duties of citizenship and prepared to mentor the lower and disenfranchised classes.

The Instituto Nacional and Elite Consolidation

Although it represented itself as the official custodian and interpreter of national culture, the Instituto also labored to set its clientele apart from other Chileans. Instituto professors and administrators apparently found no conflict between these functions. By promoting social distinction or class consciousness, the Instituto contributed to the formation of a more durable elite, which reinforced national identity and implemented authentically Chilean policies.

Such social differentiation, according to Frederic Jaher, is crucial to elite continuity. An upper class, to function properly, must establish and maintain social distance between itself and the masses. It must be exclusive without becoming isolated and irrelevant.⁷⁴ It is well known that Chileans relied on marriage and kinship to forge alliances among the various economic elites, and that full incorporation into the national elite in most cases took the nouveau riche entrepreneur, professional, or immigrant three generations. The role of the Instituto in the process was mentoring the product of elite marriage—children.

Admissions and recruitment policies in nineteenth-century Chile ensured that public education would serve elite interests. The Instituto’s relatively modest tuition, from 120 to 200 pesos per year throughout the century, was sufficient to discourage most applicants. The school never had a large enrollment, especially when seen against total national education statistics. Instituto enrollment fluctuated between 380 (1850) and 1,200 (1868). Average enrollment between 1840 and 1880 was 650. During the entire period no more than 4,700 students matriculated in the secondary system out of a total school-age population of 100,000. Indeed, education ministry records suggest that no more than 10 percent of the school-age population was actually enrolled in schools, and of this figure 4 percent never attended.⁷⁵ In enrollment, then, the Instituto occupied the apex of a very squat pyramid.

In addition to prohibitive tuition costs, exacting entrance requirements influenced the size and composition of the student body. Essentially, the Instituto admitted young men who had completed primary education in private schools, with tutors, or in one of the anexos of the national liceos created in the 1850s in an effort to separate academic and general-education tracks. The principal objective of ordinary primary schools was basic literacy. The escuelas normales, which staffed them, offered apparently sound three-year and then four-year curricula but graduated few teachers because pay for primary teachers was low. Typically, the state found it necessary to employ untrained teachers at the primary level. The anexo system, in contrast, was staffed by teachers who had completed secondary education and who were paid on a separate liceo scale.⁷⁶

To what extent did the Instituto serve as a vehicle for the upward mobility of talented middle-class youth? This, too, is hard to say. The government did offer between 20 and 50 scholarships per year for its students. To be eligible, the candidates’ families had to file a document attesting to their inability to meet tuition costs and initiate a petition for admission through a local official or priest.⁷⁷ This procedure obviously required a grasp of the bureaucracy and, preferably, the aid of a patron, which naturally favored those sons of the middle sectors who already had some elite connections. The Instituto further offered a few privately funded scholarships, but such awards were given to students designated by the donor— in most cases to orphans of prominent figures or to sons of political allies or clients.⁷⁸

It is clear, in any case, that the middle sectors were represented in the Instituto—although they were much more in evidence in the provincial liceos. In part for their benefit, various reforms in the 1860s and 1870s introduced a series of technical courses such as accounting and drafting, both of which provided graduating students with specific marketable skills. However, such courses, though present at the Instituto, were more in evidence in regional liceos. The Liceo de Valparaíso, for example, developed a business administration program, and the Liceo de Copiapó emphasized sciences related to mining.⁷⁹

For the edification of both upwardly mobile members of the middle sectors and young persons already born into the upper strata, Chilean educators in the second half of the nineteenth century had a precise understanding of how members of the elite should conduct themselves. They called for a level of civic responsibility and involvement which they did not always see in their own society. Philanthropy was one desired characteristic, and Instituto students had the opportunity to help the poor by teaching children in lower-class neighborhoods to read and write. In addition, students were urged to participate actively in the exchange and publication of ideas in student publications such as Revista de la Academia Literaria del “Instituto National,” El Colejial, El Picaflor, La Revista Independiente, and El Lincoln, all of which were housed at the Instituto.⁸⁰ The student press is replete with serialized plays, novels, short stories, histories, and, of course, political writings. Like their adult counterparts, the student periodicals promised to be impartial and publish works reflecting all political positions and to dedicate themselves to progress. In its first issue, El Lincoln stated that Chile had advanced much and was the leading nation of South America. But to secure the future, the journal said, the entire educational system had to be revamped to produce skilled technicians.⁸¹ The student press also reveals how well its contributors had been socialized. They accepted without question Chile’s uniqueness and argued that Chileans were distinguished by hard work, respect for law, and a thorough education. In their writings they often found their own political education to be the cornerstone of national stability.⁸²

Perhaps the Santiago experiences of one of the Instituto’s most famous “students,” the fictional Martín Rivas, best demonstrate how it functioned in elite recruitment and consolidation. Alberto Blest Gana created Rivas in 1862 as the hero of a much-heralded novel which bears the same name. Not a particularly creative or imaginative writer (indeed a product of Bello’s core curriculum), Blest Gana became known as the “father” of the Chilean novel for his accurate and realistic depictions of creole society in the mid-1800s. In a series of novels, El primer amor, La aritmética en el amor, Martín Rivas, El ideal de un calavera, and El jefe de la familia, Blest Gana wrote about life in and on the periphery of Chilean high society. His own family was quintessentially Chilean: it owed its success to hard work and strategic marriages. His father, William Cunningham Blest, was an Irish immigrant doctor who married into a respectable Chilean family and became an important figure in medical education at the University of Chile. Alberto and his brothers, Guillermo and Joaquín, all attended the Instituto and became public servants and authors. Martín Rivas and Blest Gana’s other protagonists had careers which paralleled their creator’s.⁸³

Martín Rivas could easily be subtitled the “making of a gentleman.” Martín came to Santiago in 1850 from Copiapó. His father, Juan Rivas, was an itinerant miner; he had abandoned his wife and son when the boy was only a year old and spent his life pursuing an elusive fortune. Martín, in his early twenties, was the sole supporter of his widowed mother and sister. His poverty, Blest Gana said, isolated him, and he saw education as a way to improve his fortunes. Luckily, Rivas’s father was able to provide his son with a letter of introduction to a former business associate in Santiago, Dámaso Encina, who housed the young student in exchange for his service as a private secretary.

Blest Gana discussed Rivas’s clothing at great length, to emphasize Chileans’ interest in appearance. Once enrolled in the Instituto, Rivas’s provincial attire attracted the disdain of his fellow students, who thought him to be a “poor devil who did not warrant their attention.” However, at the Instituto he is befriended by Rafael San Luis, who teaches him how to dress and act in society. New clothes are like a suit of armor for Rivas, and he begins to attend his patron’s tertulias, because a young lawyer needs rich and powerful friends.

The tertulias attracted other upwardly mobile young men. Among them was Emilio Mendoza, a “poor and handsome man” belonging to “one of those families who having found a lucrative speculation in politics have always enjoyed good salaries in various public employments.”⁸⁴ Mendoza was courting Leonor Encina, not only because she was elegant, but because Don Dámaso’s wealth and connections could aid his political career. Despite his poverty, Martín has many good qualities which the Encina family comes to appreciate. He is honest, intelligent, high-principled, hardworking, and loyal. In the end, he is the one who marries Leonor, and Martín becomes the manager of his father-in-law’s fortune.

The society Blest Gana depicts in Martín Rivas and his other novels is that of the upper bourgeoisie—an essentially open society in which merit and wealth are recognized and rewarded. The Encinas were among the most aristocratic families in Santiago simply because, in Chile, “money is everything.” Their prestige was “augmented by the solidness of Don Dámaso’s credit.”⁸⁵ Yet even Don Dámaso is eager to have a senate seat, because holding public office is the mark of a gentleman. Martín, on his part, is a symbol of the rising middle sectors and of the values which Chileans identified with the national character. He also represents the typical success story—the poor provincial who comes to Santiago and, through hard work and determination, achieves personal happiness, social recognition, and wealth. Martín Rivas’s adventures showed further how the Instituto instructed informally in such areas as grooming and deportment. As another of the characters told Martín, people in Santiago placed much importance on external appearance; one had to look and sound like a gentleman to gain access to the circles of power and influence. In fiction, Martín bears a close resemblance to two other Blest Gana heroes who were also Instituto students: Nataleo Ruiplán in La aritmética en el amor and Marcos from Engaños y desengaños. In fact, these characters are apparently modeled closely on the careers of Manuel Montt and Antonio Varas.⁸⁶

Efforts of the Instituto to produce an ideal leadership class were not as successful as rectors and faculty desired. By the late 1870s, national educators wondered if they had not produced a half-educated youth, young men who were more a hindrance to national development than a help. They lamented that their students were not interested in learning but only in acquiring the all-important título. Rectors advised students that if they planned to wear their education as a badge of social status or employed their talents only to serve their own ends, they should withdraw from school. The theme of superfluous youth, of the dandy who peppered his conversation with French phrases and despised the masses while he pursued lujo, not only appears in the writings of educators, but runs through the press and is a major theme in the literature of the day.⁸⁷ In his later works, Blest Gana himself focused more on the development of a vain and pleasure-seeking generation, of which the extreme example is the completely denationalized, multimillionaire Canalejas family who live in Paris and speak only French, the main characters of Los transplantados.⁸⁸

One admittedly biased observer of this process, Domingo Amunátegui, whose family resembled closely that of the fictional Emilio Mendoza, went so far as to blame the excesses of the parliamentary era (1891-1924) on the poor education the elite had received. Reflection on the veneerlike nature of education led in turn to a reassessment of the role of the estado docente,⁸⁹ Meanwhile, though, the estado docente and with it the Instituto Nacional had received a near-fatal blow from clerical forces in 1875. As a concession to the church party, President Federico Errázuriz permitted the establishment of many new private secondary schools, some of which became diploma mills and openly mocked the educational process. The legislation provided for the establishment of secondary schools which offered an educational alternative to the Instituto and eroded its monopoly over education. As a result, the more traditional sectors of the national oligarchy withdrew their sons from the Instituto and placed them in more ideologically acceptable liceos.⁹⁰ In a sense, the very success of the Liberal party in secularizing Instituto education ended its ability to function as a national preparatory school. Instead, after 1880, the Instituto became closely identified with the Liberal and Radical parties.

Epilog and Summary

Guillermo Feliú Cruz went so far as to attribute the “style” of Chilean national political and intellectual life to the ability of the Instituto Nacional to mold young men into open-minded adults, regardless of personal and family background. To him, an Instituto graduate was tolerant and therefore, by definition, liberal. A hint of Christian charity made him responsible for the poor. When the nation was under the guidance of the Instituto, Chile “exercised in America a spiritual rectorship unique in South America.”⁹¹ To aid in the latter process, the Chilean government during the period of this study offered Instituto scholarships to foreign students. It designated a total of 24 scholarships, 6 each to Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina; those of the first three countries were regularly filled in the era before the War of the Pacific.⁹² After participating in the Chilean International Exposition of 1875, the government of El Salvador was so impressed with the quality of Chilean education that it requested and received four additional scholarships for Salvadoran youths.⁹³ An indirect result was the spread of Chilean educational materials, principally textbooks, throughout the Americas from Bolivia to Guatemala.⁹⁴

The Instituto continued to provide an avenue of upward mobility to the ambitious middle sectors of Santiago and the provinces well into this century. It also continued to recruit its staff from among the best and brightest teachers in the country. As the first woman faculty member ever hired at the Instituto revealed in an interview, teaching at the Instituto was a great honor, but much more work. The Instituto was still identified with a tradition of educational excellence up to the 1970s. It was then democratized by the Salvador Allende government, and it lost some of its reputation as an elite institution along with its special status.⁹⁵ In the Chilean winter of 1986, the estado docente of Portales was finally dismantled, and the Instituto was further reduced to a public liceo serving the central Santiago area.⁹⁶

The Instituto Nacional played an essential role in the formation of Chilean society in the nineteenth century. It attempted to socialize elite youth to a common behavior which would be complementary and beneficial to national development. It endeavored to inculcate civic virtues and a respect for the common good. Its success in achieving these goals was mixed. In the early years of the republic, the Instituto provided continuity and helped to guarantee constitutionalism by developing a respect for parliamentary practices and the law in elite youth. It thereby helped to lay the foundation of Chile’s remarkable political stability and honesty in government. As the society became more complex, more truly republican, the upper class which had attended it removed itself to more exclusive institutions. But the Instituto continued to provide an avenue of social mobility for the ambitious and diligent. Some of these would be closely identified with elite interests; more often it supplied the nation with capable managers and bureaucrats. In doing so, the Instituto Nacional reflected Chilean society and its commitment to provide some upward mobility, but not in sufficient quantities to mark it as a fully modern, open society based on merit.

I should like to thank the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane, and Tulane’s Committee on Research for funding this project. I also thank Blanca Balboni, Yolanda Bravo, and Carmen Orphanopoulos, former librarians at the Instituto Nacional, for their assistance, without which this study could not have been done.