The streets are burned,

Students are yelling,

and Chile is shaking.

Today, there was a student protest at the national level. The objective is improvement of public policies, in particular education reform.
Taking the number of Santiago, capital of Chile, 100,000 students were demanding education reform on the streets.

To my surprise, they work up early in the morning and gathered together again to block and demonstrate their demand at rush hour to as many people as possible (7:00-9:00) and (18:00-20:00).
Teachers and miners also joined in.
I think this protest has a big imapct on the country given there is a primary presidental election this Sunday.
The political debate always focus on the educational reform.

What I don’t like about this issue is that it always end up generating violence, which doesn’t show a good image about this protest.
As I wrote before in my blog, free higher education at the national level is difficult and not necesarrily result in better education. I think there can be some free universities for those who cannot pay. Education should not be a market but one has to pay something unless it is imposible to do.

Anyway, this student movement is very important since it is a national action and it has been more than 2 years. It’s like there is a big protest on a same day in all parts of Japan. (From Okinawa-south to Hokkaido-north)
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