In this article I present how family-school relations influence the discussion of a controversial issue through a case study of Sainte Madeleine, an elite school in Santiago, Chile. Due to a nation-wide social outburst occurred in 2019, the country experienced social and political unrest, which led the political parties to call for elections to form a Constitutional Convention. After one year of work, citizens were asked to vote on a referendum whether they approved or rejected the Convention’s proposal for a new Constitution that addressed subjects like social welfare, indigenous and women’s rights, and the protection of the environment. Despite initial backing, the Convention suffered dramatic shifts in public support throughout 2021-2022, with high levels of coverage and heated debates on the media, ending with the rejection of the proposal. Therefore, I set out to describe the ways in which the school engaged students with the constitutional process, to identify parental strategies aimed to influence its discussion at school, and to analyze which context factors enabled or constrained the school’s ability to justify its pedagogical decisions.

An open classroom climate for discussion has been consistently established as a significant predictor of students’ civic knowledge and interest in political and social issues (Schulz et al., 2018). However, when it comes to controversial issues “many adults want schools to mirror their ideas, or fear that adding controversy to the curriculum creates controversy, as opposed to simply teaching young people how to deal more effectively with the kinds of political controversies that exist outside of school” (Hess, p.257, 2004). Fear of indoctrination of children and disagreements on what counts as a debatable issue are also common. Therefore, administrators and teachers increasingly hesitate how (and if) to address these topics (Miller et al. 2022; Oulton et al., 2004).

While ICCS 2016 reported that parents have little influence on actual decision-making processes at school -including Chile (Schulz et al., 2018), I argue that this asseveration mostly reflects formal instances of participation, since previous qualitative studies have shown the informal yet effective ways in which parents - particularly middle-class ones- influence school decisions (Calarco, 2020; Reay, 2004). In this paper I address these family-school relations in a seldom studied context, elite schools, to show how the enhanced involvement and entitlement of upper-class parents constrains the school’s ability to teach democratic citizenship and discuss controversial issues.

Chile is a paradigmatic case to study parents and their influence due to its educational marketization, with high levels of privatization and universal school choice. While most schools, whether public or private, receive public funding via vouchers, 10% of schools remain entirely private and charge high tuition fees. In this context, elite schools rely exclusively on parents for resources as well as for reputation, which allows them to maintain their elite status. Furthermore, their exhaustive student selection processes have generated extreme socioeconomic segregation inside these schools as well as endogamic ideological groups (Barrera et al., 2021; Bellei et al., 2020), which reduces the chances for students to naturally encounter diverse points of view.

The results from this study are relevant as schools are increasingly dealing with acute political divides regarding global subjects such as racism, migration, or social inequality. Additionally, it shows the barriers for the development of democratic citizenship abilities such as dialogue, debate, and conflict-processing in private schools, given their combination of social closure and strong parental influence. This also highlights the risks for countries with high or expanding privatization and school choice policies (West & Nikolai, 2017; Wilson & Bridge, 2019), which further position schools as privilege-dependent institutions (Calarco, 2020) and reduce intra-school diversity.

I carried out a qualitative case study between August and October of 2022. My main source of data is a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of semi-structured interviews with the school’s staff. I also realized a document analysis of the school’s educational project, disciplinary code, and citizenship education plan, and two non-participant observations of pedagogical activities that directly addressed the constitutional process. These techniques allowed me to establish connections between the school’s administration, teaching and student levels, thus achieving what Denzin calls “intra-method triangulation” (Fusch et al., 2018). Sainte Madeleine is a private, Catholic school, and serves students ranging from Pre-K to 12th grade. Originally an all-girls schools founded by a French congregation almost 170 years ago, it became co-educational in 2019. Like most elite schools in the country, it is currently located in one of the most affluent zones in Santiago, Chile’s capital city. The school’s educational project emphasizes social justice, solidarity, and service to the community, one of the main characteristics of ‘traditional’ Catholic elite schools in the country, as opposed to “neoconservative” ones, which emphasize religious piousness and practice (Bellei et al., 2020). I conducted semi-structured interviews with the school’s Headmistress and the Principal of Academic Affairs to account for the administration level. I also interviewed Social Studies teachers, who were almost exclusively in charge of addressing the constitutional process (both in Social Studies and the new Civic Education subject, mandatory for 11th and 12th graders since 2020). Finally, I interviewed a Spanish teacher who asked to join and had an active role in the group of teachers in charge of planning a ‘Constitutional Proposal Information Day’. Finally, I attended both the Information Day and a class discussion. The Information Day was conducted 3 weeks prior to the plebiscite, and it was aimed towards students from grades 9th to 12th. It lasted a whole morning, where they first had group readings and discussion of different passages of the constitutional proposal, followed by a panel of 4 external speakers were invited to answer the students’ questions and concerns. This last part was open to all the educational community (parents, alumni, teachers, and employees). On the other hand, the class discussion I observed took place in an 11th grade the day after the plebiscite. The homeroom teacher was one of my interviewees, and she led the discussion on the results.

Preliminary findings show that even with a compulsory civic education class and the perceived support from administration, teachers still engaged in neutrality, balance, and avoidance practices (Hess, 2004; Oulton et al., 2004) for fear of parents’ reactions. Parents exert a strong influence in very explicit ways (e.g., emails and meetings to express their concern, disapproval, or support; not sending their daughters to school on Information Day), while others are more subtle (e.g., volunteering to help or put the school in contact with experts they trust). Thus, teachers actively elude political discussion in the classroom, carefully hide their own positions and avoid addressing controversial subjects unnecessarily. They also opt for more traditional methodologies, like reading and comparing sources of information, teaching skills to recognize trustworthy media, promoting individual reflection, or sharing (not contrasting) opinions. However, the school staff develop justifications for engaging with the constitutional process. One of the main ones is the perceived alignment with their educational project, which demands the construction of a “more just” world. Another motivation is to “adapt to the times” to maintain an excellence reputation, and to play a public role, both valuable characteristics for elite schools. The decision to become co-ed has brought unexpected demands from new parents to engage more openly in public debates, as is common in other boys-only and co-ed traditional Catholic schools (whose alumni are numerous in the economic and political fields, and with whom they now compete for students). These findings illustrate the difficulties faced by an elite private school to teach students how to discuss social and political issues and process conflict in an educational market context, and the role family-school relations play in these pedagogical decisions. This is even more worrisome considering the odds of these students to achieve positions of power in the future (Zimmerman, 2019).

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