ABSTRACT
Unidades operativas educacionales (EOUs) were conceived in Chile in the late sixties, put into effect in the early seventies and are evaluated here as they functioned in the economically poor province of Nuble. The EOUs were intended to link to socioeconomic development and indirectly to assist the reduction of poverty. Data were gathered from learners and adult educators by questionnaire and interview. Lack of clarity about the EOU’s conceptualisation and purpose was further confounded by political circumstances which prevented direct economic action or community mobilisation. This evaluation of participation in 1978 revealed that participants, though poor, were not drawn from the poorest sectors of society; participation reflected the nature of the organisation through which participants were engaged, and the majority of those surveyed were women outside the wage-earning sector. Manual skills intended to have economic utility predominated over general and social education parts of the curriculum. The education thus did not reach the educationally and economically most disadvantaged; though there were some economic gains these were not in the main related to formal employment resulting from participation. Some shortcomings in the work and evaluation resulted from limited experience of the adult educators, yet much was achieved through people’s efforts with meagre human and material resources. Given the practical constraints on what education could attempt in Chile at this time, and despite dependency on adult educators and organisers for continuing existence in the main, the project did not fail completely, especially in its creation of a basic group with future capacity for diffusion of knowledge and skills. It suggests lessons for the integration of adult education efforts as a supporting mechanism for organising deprived groups.
