Faced with the shock caused by an act of violence in a school, the first trend that arises in the debate on solutions is to place guards at the doors of educational establishments.
The temptation of authoritarianism immediately reappears, with the idea that what is lacking is repression and that the installation of an ostentatious coercive apparatus could inhibit new violent acts.
The discourse can migrate to the defense of authoritarian management with proposals for external interventions.
Yes, we need to fight violence, but we will not do it with more violent practices, but with the construction of a healthy school environment, where the definition of the rules of coexistence is done with a focus on the development of autonomy, interaction, learn to live together
We need well-structured programs that can help schools in this construction and thus establish respectful relationships inside and outside the school environment.
In schools where all disciplinary functions have been handed over to the police, the emotional distance between teachers and students has widened.
When teachers avoid intimate contact with youth culture, they are unable to listen to students when they express their personal problems and fears, or they draw rigid limits of behavior that must not be trespassed by students and that prevent building bonds of trust and empathy.
Teachers become "outside" in relation to youth culture.
And for educators, when there is a police presence in schools, it becomes increasingly difficult to enforce the law and regulations.
It's the way to keep students away from school.
A recent report, prepared by a group of researchers and activists coordinated by Daniel Cara, "Right-wing extremism among adolescents and youth in Brazil: attacks on schools and alternatives to government action" indicates a series of actions to be carried out by schools.
Among them are those of understanding the connection of adolescents and young people with supremacist movements;
promote own spaces by and of the students;
retake the disciplines that teach humanities;
permanent training of education workers to identify what attracts attention in schools;
implement a critical education about the media, carry out diagnoses and obtain data for the implementation of a public policy for school coexistence;
monitor and evaluate work, dialogue with families.
The school and the family are the main institutions in the education of children, adolescents and young people, they provide the basis for them to feel safe and with high self-esteem to face life.
It is necessary to rethink pedagogical cultures, avoiding "moral panic", repressive measures and the call for police public safety, focusing on public and social prevention policies, transferring the problem from the individual to the institution, the school.
Looking at violence only as a phenomenon outside of school leads to a feeling of immobility.
Educational institutions need to learn to create strategies that prevent and resolve situations of violence without calling the police, so that the school itself can solve problems such as fights, aggression, insults between students and between students and adults.
What has been happening alerts us to the urgency for education professionals to have better working conditions that help build a healthy school climate, considering its operation, its local characteristics, and the cultural, sociopolitical, and economic context in which it occurs. we are inserted
A democratic management can establish rules of coexistence with the participation of adolescents and young people, taking into account youth culture and what students bring from home and from the street.
This would facilitate the processes of relationship with the school space and positive changes in daily life.
Thus, this could be a welcoming and safe space for children and young people and, why not, a benchmark for respectful coexistence between different people, something that today is also rare outside the limits of the school.
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