School dynamics: from difference to inequality

Abstract

The school generates school failure as a product of its tendency towards normalization. School dynamics, and especially its main elements: social expectations, task design and evaluation, act transforming differences into inequalities. Schools can be effective and go beyond mere reproduction to the extent that the psychosocial processes that are developed in them, considered as a unit of analysis, they are adequate. The modernization of education in Chile seems to be oriented in this direction due to the decentralization of curricular management; but doubts remain as to whether the amount of funding is adequate, especially teachers' salaries.