We are all together: the closing of the rural school from the children's perspective

Abstract

The systematic closing of rural schools is a phenomenon that has developed for over a decade in Chile. The results presented herein originated from our research on the closing of municipal rural schools and its impact on the social relations between the school and local communities. In this paper we present the particular perspective of the children of a rural multigrade primary school regarding the announcement of the closure of the school, for which a workshop methodology was developed with the use of graphical tools, incorporating some elements of a discussion group. Results show that children appreciate the feeling that they are part of a socially cohesive group and that this is an accumulated capital, which is unique to that school and is not transferable to another. The children also interpret the possible school closing as one more step in other transformations in the sector, in which the municipality has favored foreign interests over those of the locals.