Good Workers, Citizens and Patriots: Night schools in Chile, 1845 - 1900

Abstract

Abstract

This article reconstructs the emergence and development of Chile’s night schools for adults between 1845 and 1900 as hybrid pedagogical spaces, connected to but not wholly subsumed by a State still in formation. Drawing on a corpus of primary sources —laws, decrees, ministerial reports, official bulletins and surveys, and civil-society documents— it demonstrates how mutualist initiatives, military-disciplinary strategies, and industrial training proposals from organizations such as the Sociedad de Fomento Fabril (SOFOFA) converged in these institutions. Rather than imposing a single model, the State oscillated between regulatory initiatives, indifference, and limited control, leaving night schools caught in a contest between popular self-organization and competing public and private interests. By revealing the tensions among education, labor and citizenship, this study offers a critical reevaluation of the early republican configurations of adult education in Chile.