DE LA FUNCIÓN SOCIAL A LA LÓGICA DE MERCADO: LA CONSTITUCIONALIZACIÓN NEOLIBERAL DEL DERECHO A LA EDUCACIÓN EN CHILE

LA CONSTITUCIONALIZACIÓN NEOLIBERAL DEL DERECHO A LA EDUCACIÓN EN CHILE

Abstract

This article examines the constitutionalisation of the right to education in Chile as a displacement of its original social function towards a market logic, bringing together constitutional law, political philosophy and education. Drawing on an analysis of the 1980 Constitution, the resulting educational legislation and the classical understanding of the social function, it is shown that the Chilean legal order reserved this category for property, without extending it to education, leaving the latter governed by subsidiarity and freedom of teaching. This constitutional asymmetry is examined in light of a philosophical matrix that combines Plato's dialogues and Theodor Adorno's notion of Halbbildung on the instrumentalisation of education, itself examined in its own limits, and is verified in the legal-institutional mechanisms of financing and quality assurance. It is concluded that the 1980 constitutionalisation foreclosed the possibility of a full social function for the right to education, and that reopening it requires an explicit constitutional discussion on its legal nature as a public good.