Educational evaluation device and governmentality in chile: The origins (1844-1970)

Abstract

The evaluation device is a key technology for governmentality or "conduct of conducts" in the field of education. In this regard, the studies of the last years emphasize especially the association of the mechanisms of educational evaluation with the market and the political-institutional processes initiated in the 1980s. However, there is a long path that precedes the introduction of neoliberalism in education. This article examines this genesis from the midnineteenth century until 1970. It exhibits the procedures of surveillance and recording of educational activity in the nineteenth century and the growing use of statistical calculability and scientific knowledge, which acquire a crucial role from the first decades of the 20th century, until reaching an integral configuration of the device at the end of the 1960s. In this trajectory there are repeated struggles and criticism, but finally a device is stabilized, which is marked by state centralization, a great confidence in science, expressed particularly in psychometric and educational measurement, and a widespread use of standardized evaluations. When, in the 1980s, market policies in education were established, this device was already prefigured in its cardinal elements. Under the government of Frei Montalva, within the framework of educational planning, it had been integrated, constituting a device ready to operate and guide the intervention in the educational system. If it was not put into operation before the 1980s, this was due to technological limitations and political contingencies, not because of opposition to the mechanism. The investigation is based on the examination of an extensive compilation of documents of the period (laws, official documents, discourses, studies, written press, among others), in addition to interviews with key informants.