Securing eliteness: class strategies of an elite school in Chile

Abstract

The ways in which elite schools in Chile reproduce power and privilege within the nation’s highly inequitable schooling system are largely ignored by researchers and the general public. In this article, the authors address this gap by identifying and exploring the primary class strategies that an elite school employs to secure their elite status. Through these strategies, the school keeps their community closed to the outside world, promotes shared values within their community, and remains faithful to founding principles in their educational project. These strategies allow the school to uphold strong social isolation, to shield them from public scrutiny, to cultivate elite subjectivities, and to forge a framework through which hierarchies are established. The authors argue that these class strategies not only secure the school’s elite status and reputation but also are central in maintaining and advancing their students’ class positioning in Chile.