Resumen

The objective of this article is to understand the process of expansion of the system of public primary education during the period of territorial formalization and consolidation. Between 1840 and 1907 the multiplication of schools and the rate of enrollment increased, but the chronology and geographical distribution throughout the country were not always parallel phenomena’s. This discovery makes it necessary to reconstruct from the evidence certain trends, in order to demonstrate that the extension of schooling and the access to it were processes that were closely linked but whose connection was not mechanical in nature. Moreover the pattern of rural settlement in Chilean society was at the bottom in both the scholarly index and the attendance of students during this period, because it determined the construction of a urban network of schools, leaving two thirds of the population disseminated in the countryside out the system.