At last! Funga could make it into classrooms.

"In just a single spoonful of soil, there are hundreds of species of fungi,“ says the latest State of the World's Plants and Fungi report from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. AThe fungal kingdom is so diverse that, according to the most recent estimates, there are about 2.5 million species of fungi on the planet. However, we currently know only around 155,000. At the current pace of species discovery and description, it could take between 750 and 1,000 years to fully document the fungal kingdom.

Despite their cross-cutting role and their importance in maintaining ecosystem balance, fungi have been underrepresented in many areas, including education. When they are mentioned, they are often reduced to their role in the development of pharmaceutical products, in fermentation processes, or their ability to cause disease.

But soon this could change: in a historic moment for Chile, the term ‘funga’ has been included alongside ‘flora and fauna’ in the Proposed Update to the National Curriculum Bases for 1st Primary to 2nd Secondary school. Fungi may finally gain the place they deserve in education, where they can be studied in a comprehensive way, as a kingdom that plays a wide range of essential roles in terrestrial ecosystems, beyond the microscopic world.

We celebrate that the Ministry of Education has listened to, received, and incorporated the recommendations of Fundación Fungi as part of the efforts to advance updated educational content aligned with the environmental and educational challenges we face as a society.

The use of the term “funga” in the proposed new curriculum —a word that was co-defined by Fundación Fungi’s Executive Director, Giuliana Furci, together with Latin American mycologists Francisco Kuhar and Elisandro Ricardo Drechsler-Santos— is much more than a simple linguistic update: it represents a major step toward an education in which future generations understand the essential roles of the fungal kingdom on our planet. These will be the same generations that, in the near future, will be responsible for implementing stronger and more effective environmental protection and conservation policies.

To address today’s challenges, it is essential to study and understand nature as a whole, recognizing the complexity and interconnection among the organisms that make it up. For this reason, one of Fundación Fungi’s goals over the past decade has been for children to learn about fungi just as they learn about plants and animals.

This path has led us to donate our field guides to public libraries and schools, carry out hundreds of talks, interventions, and exhibitions about the fungal kingdom in educational institutions, create a free mycology curriculum, and train teachers and educators in Chile, the United States, and Brazil. More recently, it has also led to the opening of Chile’s first permanent exhibition room dedicated to fungi, developed in collaboration with the Museo Interactivo Mirador (MIM).

From this new curriculum proposal, we particularly highlight the inclusion of mycological content within the “Life Sciences” learning area, in the learning objectives for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 8th grade. This ensures that children between the ages of 6 and 13 acquire knowledge about fungal diversity, alongside plants and animals.

To continue making progress and reduce the historical gap in teaching about fungi compared with plants and animals, we recommend including specific learning objectives on the fungal kingdom. These should cover topics such as fungal life cycles, their ecological roles, and species classification, in a similar way to the content that currently exists for flora and fauna.

What comes next? The proposal is currently being adjusted based on feedback received through the public consultation process. The final version will be released in November this year and is expected to be implemented starting in March 2025.

We are hopeful that this curriculum proposal will become a reality, and that soon children and adolescents across Chile will become the naturalists our world needs.

It is time to give fungi the recognition and place they deserve!

*This opinion column, written by Daniela Torres, was originally published in El Desconcierto, a Chilean digital media outlet.*