Violence at school: work me out or I will devour you

Abstract

This article summarises the main results of a decade or so of research projects on forms of violence at schools in Brazil. The main observations it makes are: 1) the rules and standards governing the conduct of both teachers and pupils lack clarity and coherence, which suggests that situations arise in which those rules and standards are disrespected; 2) forms of school management that include strong charismatic and participatory elements got better results than a bureaucratic management style; 3) in schools that practise the “banking” concept of education, some of the oppressed students themselves come to oppress their schoolmates, thereby reproducing certain scholastic and social conditions; 4) teacher training is a longway from reality, which is more complex, and this leads the profession to lose credibility and become less attractive and causes kindergarten and primary teachers to suffer mentally and emotionally. The authors propose that the path forward is to bring schools into harmony with the changes in today’s world, apart from anything else because it is getting more and more difficult to maintain formulae thatwere typical of the 19th century.