For experts, adequate training can make educators see conflicts as a learning opportunity
Violence is often considered one of the biggest concerns in the country's public schools. According to recent research data from the Union of Official Education Teachers of the State of São Paulo (Apeoesp) – in partnership with the Locomotiva Institute – teachers from the state network consider that verbal aggression is the main manifestation of violence directed against them. Theft, discrimination and physical attacks also make up the list of violent acts directed against teachers. But, for professor Telma Vinha, researcher at the Faculty of Education (FE) at Unicamp and coordinator of the Study and Research Group on Moral Education (GEPEM), the mass of data must be evaluated with caution. The professor points out that there are mistakes in research like that of Apeoesp, as the surveys work with a very broad notion of violence. In the expert opinion, the results of the report, e.g. They do not distinguish coexistence problems – which the school should know how to deal with – from aggressive behavior that can be punished, reinforcing the false impression that the Brazilian educational system is excessively hostile.
For Telma Vinha, initiatives that consider violence as one of the main problems of public education in Brazil deprive managers and teachers of the responsibility of undertaking pedagogical work to improve coexistence in the educational space, attributing this function to the public authorities. The GEPEM researcher's argument is confirmed by data from another Apeoesp study, carried out in 2013 in partnership with the Data Popular Institute. For the 1,4 teachers interviewed, measures to resolve conflicts in schools range from promoting debates for students to hiring security professionals, installing surveillance cameras and policing the areas surrounding the institution.
According to Telma Vinha, not every conflict that occurs at school should be understood as violence or negative behavior. This position is endorsed by Áurea Maria Guimarães, retired researcher from the Faculty of Education at Unicamp and founder of the Laboratory for Studies on Violence, Culture and Youth (VIOLAR), now incorporated into the Research Group on Public Policies, Education and Society (GPPES). In Áurea’s opinion, “the school is not a space where harmony reigns, but rather a space of tension like any institution. It is permeated by its established side – the laws, regulations, norms, official content to be taught –, but also by its instituting aspect, which is everything that problematizes what is already consolidated”.
The teacher also states that educators must learn to deal with student objections, as dialogue is essential to the educational process. In her words, “we need to denaturalize the idea that respect for authority is an attitude with which students should offer teachers. If authority involves the other, thehe who obeys, in a relationship of dependence, respect implies not only recognizing the other, but also the relationship that is established between them. In this sense, reciprocity is the foundation of respect. In other words, we must treat the autonomy of others on equal terms with our own.”
The research carried out by the group coordinated by Telma Vinha in public and private institutions, however, reveals that the measures taken by educators in the context of conflicts in the school space are generally improvised and aimed at the containment and punishment of behaviors that would supposedly disrupt the progress of classes. On the other hand, disrespectful attitudes among students themselves that are not harming teaching are normally disregarded by teachers. For Telma, the biggest mistake in this approach is that it sends the message that respect should only be given to people who have authority, including educators and school managers, and not to any human being. The researcher points out that, in basic and continuing education courses, the teacher should be better prepared to treat conflicts as an opportunity for the student to learn to resolve their differences through dialogue, expressing what they feel without resorting to offense.
Telma advocates that coexistence problems in schools be differentiated so that educators can intervene more constructively in each situation. In other words, small gestures of disrespect such as insults or provocations during class should not be treated with the same rigor by teachers as those occurring during episodes of serious physical aggression. Furthermore, the teacher adds, the rules adopted at school must be fair and collectively defined, encouraging student autonomy. “When you associate obeying a rule with authority and punishment, you are teaching these students that thinking and obeying are different things. In autonomy I obey because I think, because I understand the need, just as I can question when a rule is unfair”. Researcher Áurea Maria Guimarães agrees with this perspective and argues that the view that a good student is only one who who accepts all orders without contesting.
Transformative initiatives
The group coordinated by professor Telma Vinha at Unicamp has been developing a moral education project in public schools in Campinas since 2013. The proposal begins with an assessment of the school climate by students, teachers and managers with the aim of mapping the quality of coexistence, in addition to the relationships between each of them and the teaching and learning process. The results help to identify what is already going well and what are the main difficulties faced by the institution. These data are discussed by researchers and professionals who work at the school, allowing the planning of an intervention program that makes it possible to improve the school environment.
One of these strategies is the creation of a subject for students in the last years of primary and secondary education focused on learning ethical values and collective discussion of coexistence problems. Interested teachers receive a continuing training course at the school to teach the subject, which is included in the curriculum in weekly classes lasting 75 to 90 minutes.
The Maria Pavanatti Favaro Municipal Elementary School (Emef), located in Jardim São Cristovão, was one of the participants in the project developed by GEPEM. The school's director, Sandra Shafirovits, says that, when she met the team coordinated by teacher Telma Vinha, she was already seeking to implement a public policy of democratic management at the school, but recognizes that she had difficulties in understanding the appropriate path to success in the initiative.
Three years ago, the school received a visit from researchers and, in addition to weekly training for school professionals aimed at improving the quality of relationships, a subject on ethical values was created in the 6th to 9th year classrooms, with support from the Department of Education from Campinas. The course was named “Viva Ética” and is currently taught by four teachers for 90 minutes per week.
According to Robson Alexandre de Moraes, pedagogical coordinator for the 7th to 9th year and Youth and Adult Education (EJA), the themes chosen for the classes come from reflection with the course teachers. Classes are focused on encouraging students to learn to discuss, respectfully, their coexistence problems, becoming more autonomous and participatory.
Another initiative proposed by GEPEM and implemented at Maria Pavanatti were the assembly circles between managers, teachers, staff and students. The proposal is to encourage these different groups to debate in a democratic way the problems that affect everyone at the school. Assemblies for each of the segments take place every fortnight and once every 45 days everyone meets and presents their demands for collective discussion. The agendas are defined in advance and each meeting is recorded in minutes.
The team at Journal of Unicamp participated in one of the classes on the “Viva Ética” course, taught by Professor Priscila Lizardo Vieira, of Portuguese Language, for the 8th year class. On the blackboard the class theme: “Release the minutes – the importance of recording”. According to the teacher, the course was prepared to discuss not only the problems of coexistence between students, but also to allow young people to participate more actively in school assemblies. The day's class aimed to work with students on the importance of recording collective debates in minutes and encouraging them to understand which behaviors are disrespectful in assemblies. Priscila sits in a circle with the teenagers and shows them several videos that exemplify in a good-humored way these inappropriate behaviors in meetings. Young people remain attentive throughout the class and are encouraged by the teacher to rethink their postures.
Pedagogical coordinator Robson de Moraes talks about the benefits of the project implemented at Maria Pavanatti: “These initiatives help to develop students' ability to participate, as they recognize their role as citizens within the school”. Robson also notes that collective debate contributes to improving coexistence between teachers, students, staff and managers, in addition to reducing rates of violence at school: “From the moment the school's internal issues become horizontal, the discussion about The factors that generate violence also become collective. If, on the one hand, you bring violence to the center of the debate because it can be the subject of an assembly, on the other hand, you make these people talk more, and by talking more, across 'n' subjects, you encourage a dialogue that tends to minimize violence.”
Director Sandra Shafirovits states that one of the main challenges to implementing democratic management policies in schools like Maria Pavanatti Favaro is transforming the mentality of teachers who trained in a more authoritarian educational model, which did not allow student participation. The manager herself recognizes having changed her attitude towards students due to the assemblies at the school, becoming more attentive to the demands of young people. Furthermore, Sandra states that students have already proposed fundamental debates in collective assemblies, such as the good use of the school's physical space, the need for more cultural and extracurricular activities (such as competitions and educational trips) and the lack of teachers at the school.
In Telma Vinha's opinion, the transformation of the Brazilian educational system involves a radical change in our school culture, which is still very mechanistic – focused on the transmission of the basic disciplinary contents that make up the curriculum and the improvised resolution of coexistence problems. The researcher concludes: “It is naive to think that I will solve the problem of coexistence with lectures, increasing rules or giving speeches about it. Because it is not a 'peace project' that will resolve the issue, but rather the systematic experience of values and the dialogical resolution of conflicts.” For the expert, confronting violence in the educational system is directly linked to the implementation of public policies that profoundly change the relationships between teachers, managers and students, encouraging an open dialogue about the adversities and diversities that are part of everyday school life.
The horrors of discrimination
For Luma Nogueira de Andrade, professor at the University of International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusofonia (Unilab), the issue of violence in schools should also be addressed based on the discrimination suffered by people who are part of social minorities, such as LGBT people and followers of African-based religions. In a survey carried out in 2016 by the Education Department of the Brazilian Association of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transvestites and Transsexuals (ABGLT) with 1.016 students, aged between 13 and 21, around 70% of those interviewed reported that they were victims of verbal aggression because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The same survey also found that almost 30% of LGBT students were physically attacked for the same reasons, while 56% were sexually harassed at school.
In her thesis, defended at the Faculty of Education of the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), Luma de Andrade analyzed the trajectories of young transvestites enrolled in high schools in the state education network of Ceará. The teacher noticed that many of these teenagers abandoned their studies due to their gender identity. For Luma, “the school, instead of carrying out the inclusion process, implements a process of 'stripping' people of their differences so that they can be included. And then there is a huge difficulty at school, because the institution still cannot understand how a transvestite and transsexual person should be treated.”
In her thesis, the professor noticed that many school managers in Ceará thought that transvestites voluntarily abandoned their studies. However, when the researcher approached a teenager, she realized that her departure from school was motivated by prejudice: “And when I went to interview the young women, they told me that they couldn't survive at school because they weren't accepted, or because their social name didn't work. was respected, whether because they were attacked by colleagues or because they couldn’t use the women’s bathroom.” Furthermore, Luma exemplifies, the teenagers questioned school rules, were labeled by educators as undisciplined and suspended from classes.
Luma also argues that the attacks that LGBT people and followers of African-based religions suffer in schools from their peers penalize them for their differences. For the teacher, violence in these cases is justified by a desire to force people to “fall in line”. The Unilab researcher illustrates this process with a case from her childhood as a young transvestite: “At school I was physically violated several times. And one time, during the break, a colleague didn't accept me playing with the girls. He beat me, and when I arrived at the classroom crying and a colleague went to complain to the teacher, the teacher came to me and said: 'but who told you to be like that?'. I was then raped. Even though I was a victim of the process, I was seen as the culprit.”
Advertising man Manu Rodrigues Ferreira, aged 26, also experienced traumatic experiences during his school years. At that time, when he still recognized himself as a lesbian woman – today he identifies as
a transsexual man – reports having suffered several attacks from boys who did not accept his sexual orientation and told him that, to be considered a man, he must first learn to “be hit like a man”. Furthermore, Manu also claims to have been discriminated against by teachers at the school where he studied: “I suffer from anxiety. In the midst of a crisis, inside the classroom, I was shaking a lot and, feeling short of breath, I laid my head on a friend's shoulder and said I wasn't feeling well. Before my friend could ask what was going on, the teacher shouted at both of us, suggesting that we were disrespecting her class. I just grabbed my backpack and left the room.” The publicist reveals that situations like these were repeated to the point where he confessed to his parents that he no longer wanted to go to school.
University student Clayton Lisboa Meira, 24, also claims to have been a victim of discrimination in elementary school for being homosexual. When he was in 9th grade, one of his classmates approached him and warned him that he was going to beat him so that he would “become a man”. Although he was protected by friends, Clayton claims the school was completely silent on the case.
For professor Luma de Andrade, our educational system is greatly influenced by a conservative and traditional culture, which is not very sensitive to diversity. She also adds that the discrimination that many students suffer for being homosexual, bisexual, transsexual and transvestites affects their esteem to the point of these people think that they will never be able to achieve professional success. But the Unilab researcher ponders: “We have to understand, with a certain humility and humanity, that it is complex to understand these issues of difference. We are not born understanding. It is necessary to search for this knowledge. Because it is also not given and, sometimes, it is prohibited from being given, as it is considered unacceptable.”
Luma argues that the educational system at municipal, state and federal levels must offer continuing education courses so that educators, managers and the entire community can understand issues of sexual diversity, respecting the plurality of young Brazilians who are in the school space.
To know more
1. GEPEM-Unicamp launched this year a guidance manual for the application of questionnaires that assess the school climate. The document is available free of charge and can be applied to educational institutions that wish to review their pedagogical practices. Link: http://www.bibliotecadigital.unicamp.br/document/?queues=79559&opt=1>
2. In the book “Transvestis at school: subjection and resistance to the normative order”, published by Editora Metanoia in 2016, professor Luma Nogueira de Andrade (Unilab) discusses the results of her thesis on the trajectories of young transvestites in the Ceará educational system.
What do teachers perceive as violence against them in schools?
Measures to combat violence in schools
Assaults and sexual harassment against young LGBT people in schools