Higher Education

While in Chile the government decided to pass a new law increasing the price of public universities. It is a truism that University students are some of the more revolutionary people around. Another truism that I've recently discovered is that the world round, the vast majority of the protestors are fools, who are just out to get angey and break stuff, regardless of the cause. There are those who are dedicated and informed about what they are protesting against, but the vast ajority are just pissed off about a lot of aspects of life and a protest is a good way to vent. In both America and Chile I'vecause what appears from the outside to be found this to be true. Its a shame, be an organized united front is, upon closer examination a lot of poorly informed firestarters and a few informed spokesman. I suppose this same social breakdown could be applied to society at large, but as a university student, this is the world of which I am a part.

This poster was found and photographed in Santiago by my friend Alexi. It translates to "The future of Chile. NO TO THE LAW." The law being understood as the new higher education finance bill.

Similar motif, also from Alexi. It reads "Higher Education" with the dollar sign added for emphasis.

This is my favorite. Right before the law was about to be passed, the Spanish telecom giant Telefonica launched a new mobil phone branch called movistar. Their ad campaign was based around various phrases all ending in "me" (yes it means me). What this translated to was a lot of photos of young attractive people with phrases below their photos such as "call me" "make me happy" "recharge me" etc. This poster takes an obvious reference to their adds and changes it to read "Educate me". Thanks to Alexi for the photo.

The law was eventually passed despite months of strikes and protests. As I understand it the protests don't worry the government much since the universities go on strike for one reason or another during the first semester of every school year. Teachers generally incorporate at least two weeks of unscheduled classes into their syllabi to compensate for the time they plan on losing to strikes. In the end I'm not sure which hurts the education of the university students more, have to take out a bigger loan, or losing about 25% of each school year to strikes.

Español | Deutsche | Français | Italiano | Português