Violence Control In Schools Require Change In The Environment

About 669 national public schools had their classes interrupted due to cases of violence – such as shootings, robberies, vandalism, threats, attacks and others in 2021, according to the Brazilian Yearbook of Public Security . The data is constantly presented in the country and specialists believe that starting the debate on the theme seems to be essential for understanding its causes and consequences.

The rise in violent attacks against schools has also become a hot topic in debates about education and national security. In 2022, Brazil had ten cases, and, in 2023, seven cases were registered until May. Vivian Batista da Silva, professor and director of the Faculty of Application of the Faculty of Education (FE) at USP, analyzes that violence in schools is not a new topic in the national context. “Experiences of violence take multiple forms. They can happen in the daily life of schools, in the relationships between students and teachers, they can have a physical dimension with various gradations and it also has symbolic dimensions”, she comments.

increase in violence
Despite the theme not being so recent in the public debate, it is interesting to note that the advancement of these cases, at least in the way they present themselves today, demonstrates, in a curious way, a facet that the country had never experienced. “We go from violence in schools to violence against schools”, reflects the specialist. Thus, student environments began to receive constant threats and attacks that circulate in a fluid and powerful way. The teacher also points out that even threats that do not materialize carry with them a feeling of fear for individuals by breaking the trust that people usually have in schools as an environment of training and protection.

The increase in violence in the school environment — and in other social spaces — has different reasons, but the expert says that, for some time now, the school has been the target of harmful speeches in some places. “I think we cannot forget that we have lived for years with a troubled policy, with the propagation of a hate speech that crosses different instances of society”, reflects Vivian.

Reflection and accurate understanding of the scenario in question, therefore, seem to be a good way to start taking certain measures to prevent the school from having an increase in these cases. Thus, the specialist explains that preventing the circulation of violent speeches in society is very difficult, but it is possible to make social subjects learn to have a negative reading associated with these manifestations.

Differences
Another aspect of this scenario that is addressed by the Yearbook is the difference between the violence rates of the national states. Rio de Janeiro, for example, is the national Federative Unit (UF) that suffered the most from classes interrupted as a result of shootings, while the State of São Paulo suffered the most from cases of threats and attacks.

“The discourse of violence is produced and circulates in different spaces, in some of them it has more conditions to be strong, to be read and to be absorbed. This is related to the working conditions of the school, there are spaces that are more vulnerable to violence”, analyzes Vivian. This aspect not only encompasses the security devices that schools may have, but also have a relationship with the social community in which these students are inserted and, for this reason, the evaluation of each case is relevant to this debate.

Bullying is also another type of violence that is extremely present in these environments, being one of the ways used for violence to happen in schools. “ Bullying ends up establishing a culture of violence at school. A school that is vulnerable to this type of internal discourse ends up being more vulnerable to external violence as well,” adds the expert. Thus, it is noted that this type of violence makes both the aggressor and the aggressors even more vulnerable to other types of aggression.

culture of peace
Veridiana Campos, a researcher at the Center for the Study of Violence (NEV) at USP, explains that, in order to control the spread of violence, it is necessary for a change of culture to be introduced in the social environment. The expert comments, therefore, that it is possible to observe a pattern in the perpetrators of violence against schools — generally, they are men with serious interpersonal relationship problems and with easy access to the internet, who end up linking themselves to communities of extreme violence.

In addition, the researcher comments that, in this environment, violence is seen as a kind of redemption for social aspects that would be wrong in society. “These young people are slowly being socially disengaged, they are dehumanizing their victims and this violence is becoming more and more reasonable. But I’m talking about a long process, this kind of thing doesn’t happen overnight,” she comments.

The expert also reinforces the need to create a culture of peace in social environments as a whole, since contact with environments that propagate prejudices of different orders — such as racism, xenophobia, fatphobia, homophobia, among others — it is striking in our society and seems to be diffused even in cultural apparatuses.

“We need to educate for respect and educate for affection. This cannot be taught in a time left over from school, we need to have systemic and perennial actions of what I call socio-affective education”, explains Veridiana. To illustrate the need for this transformation, the researcher analyzes that bullying, for example, is a type of recurrent violence, that is, the individual who is the target of this discrimination can become an aggressor in the future.

For the construction of a socio-affective education, therefore, a wide range of investment is required, which must be both time and money. The researcher explains that this is necessary, because for the construction of a socio-affective education, it is essential that educators have good training, with the participation of a multidisciplinary team. “This framework of training aimed at creating a more loving, more welcoming way of perceiving the world, where respect for others is, in fact, a quality, something to be sought after, to be reproduced, this takes a lot of time. ”, comments.