Social representations of violence, teaching, and power among Brazilian public school students

Sergio Kodato[1], Felipe Watarai[2]

In Brazilian public schools located in poor quarters of big cities, complaints of parents and teachers that they are being physically and morally aggressed by their children and students are getting more and more frequent. The difficulties found by parents and teachers in setting limits to children, which are necessary for the educational process, represent a crisis in the micro-powers exercise of authority and in the school management role. Facing strategies of power which are perceived as spurious and uneven, children and teenagers tend to react either through apathy and alienation, or through disrespecting classroom rules. The establishing and elaboration of power relationships begin in the attachment relation with the parents, resulting in the current social relationships, which are based on ideologies, such as the individual success. This study aims to investigate representations of power, violence, and teaching, elaborated by students from 9 to 12 years old. The research was conducted during a violence prevention program promoted in Brazilian public schools, that presented problems with violence and criminality. The datum analysis was developed through the social representations method, formulated by Moscovici, based on the analysis of discourse practices, and of graphical and plastic images produced by the studied subjects. For this study, 50 students, randomly chosen, were interviewed on power and authority themes. These interviews were recorded, and analyzed through the ideas-association method. The students were asked to make a drawing of a meaningful event of their life-story. The results indicate that 48% of the interviewed children have the family as the main theme, associated to an environment that offers care, nourishing, recreation, and happiness. The parents are represented as images of protection and love, considered being worthy of identification. For 30%, the main focus is related to school. The authority images are associated to violence, absence, abandonment, neglect, and affective apathy, due to a negative experience with the parental image, or its substitute. For 22%, the main theme is related to nature and its necessity to be preserved, the urgency to stop the current pollution and destruction. Students who were rejected and maltreated by their parents search, in a substitutive reparatory process, an affective and sheltering authority in the image of their teachers. Power representations are based on the “good” and “evil” opposition. The “good” teachers are the ones who are perceived as being close to the students, considered “cool”, and who know how to manage affective relationships. On the other hand, the “bad” teachers are the ones who “disrespect and curse the students”, and keep classroom discipline through threats and humiliations. For conclusions, it is possible to state that negative representations of power, either from family, or from school, impel psychological processes of “aggression and avoidance” among these students. Violence and disorder are represented as obstacles to teaching process; the denial of the educational and disciplinary authority causes a perishing of the meaning of school and knowledge.

Key-words: social representations, power, violence, public schools, prevention.

1. Introduction

Brazil presents a population of 186,770,562 inhabitants; an Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita of US$ 6,403; a high illiteracy rate, 14.8% of the adult population; a life expectancy of 67.6 years; and a Human Development Index (HDI) of 0.830.

The unemployment rate continues high, between 9 and 12% of the working population. The combination of poverty, inefficient institutions, and an outrageous income unevenness among the population presents impact on the social and economic production, stimulating violence and criminality, pointed as the only possibility of access to the consumerism world for a great part of the population.

            In Brazil, the homicide rate is of 26 per 100,000 inhabitants. In the state capitals, it goes up to 40. The Health World Organization report shows that, in 2005 around the world, the suicides add up to half of the violent deaths; the homicides, one third; and the deaths related to wars, 18%. On the other hand specifically in Latin America, this situation changes. The suicide rate reaches eight per 100,000; and the homicides reach 25 per 100,000.

            Very different from the image offered by the mass means of communication – that violence is concentrated in some specific places, such as Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Pernambuco – the map of the homicides distribution across the country shows that there are places as violent as, or even more violent, in border regions and in small cities, practically without law or Government.

            In 2004, from ten deceased youngsters, four were homicide victims in Brazil. The datum indicate that the homicides increase was leaded by the youth; from 1980 to 2004, the homicides rate among the youngsters increased from 30 to 51.7, while it decreased among the rest of the population, from 21.3 to 20.8. The social institutions of educational support for the teenagers in risk situation aren’t enough and efficient.

            In the 556 towns with the highest homicide rates among all the age bands, 42% of the Brazilians live. These towns are medium and big towns, with an average population of 135,000 inhabitants. Men are 92.1% of the victims. The homicide rate among black men is 73% higher than among the white. Symbolical violence, irresponsibility in the public administration, and discrimination against the different ones are practiced in social institutions.

Another rate that presents the violence concentration across the country, through the opposite way, is the amount of cities that don’t present homicides. From 2002 to 2004, 1411 towns – 25% of all the country – didn’t present any murders. Considering only the young population, the same occurred in 2885 towns (51.8%).

It’s remarkably interesting that, in peaceful towns, due to an intense process of violence exposition by the mass media, the fear imaginary set up a big and violent city way of live to this population, causing individualism, loneliness, and perishing of the community spirit.

Considering the educational system, only 37% from over ten million Brazilian youngsters from 15 to 17 years old were signed in secondary schools, according to the National Research by Households Sample (PNAD), carried out in 2001 by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). In the same year, other five million teenagers in the same age band didn’t even attend school.

The score level reached by Brazilian students in the Program of International Student Evaluation (PISA) are much lower than the international average. The evaluation system of elementary education, developed by the Ministry of Education, showed that the score of Brazilian public schools is around 36.5%, indicating insufficiency in all levels.

This present research took place in this context of power and authority crisis, and aimed to investigate the diverse representations and meanings constructed by the students in order to understand this complex situation.

Power is the capacity, the potential or strength to do something. Power is also “[...] the force serving an idea” (Crabb, 1994). The author describes a power born from a preponderant social will, designed to drive community to a social order that is considered good and to set members to develop the necessary behavior and attitudes.

This same author points that “[...] force is, indeed, inherent to power. We define capacity of coercion as the possibility of an effective development of power. Coercion is an effective use of force, which is inherent to power; constraint is the expectation, alone, of force use [...]”.

According to Durozoi (1990:372), “[...] the expression ‘to be able’ is synonymous of having the possibility, the right, or the permission; the substantive ‘power’ holds the meaning of potential, of capacity (specially legal or moral) to act, or of exercising an authority (which, when it is related to a personal power, tends to be arbitrary). Therefore, in the concrete sense, institutions exercise this authority”.

Among Latin America societies in development, institutions in crisis accomplish, but only partially, their functions of authority and social mediation. From the family, passing by the institutions, to the State, power from authority and rules is questioned on its competence and legitimacy. This creates a culture of the “Brazilian way”, which allows people to break the law specially, in public institutions and among elected functions, establishing as a motto “anything for my friends; for my enemies, the law”. Power relationships established in public institutions are fickle, orientated by individual and financial interests, and include both affective and commercial aspects in exchanges of favors and benefits.

In this context, our aim is to understand how children and teenagers, specifically from the poorest classes of the population, elaborate frustrations and limitations inherent to their difficult and hard everyday lives. We investigated the meanings of the relationships they establish, the social representations of power – as something constitutive of the child’s educational and social adaptation –, and the configuration of the citizenship idea, as a conscience over limits and rights, duties and possibilities. How do children assimilate impositions from disciplinary and “educational” power; how do they perceive limits and possibilities of power, and of control over others and over the world?

The clinical reports of several cases of people influenced by delinquency or detained in institutions for delinquent teenagers indicate a strong correlation between delinquent behavior and difficulties in the identification processes with authority and power figures. Usually, the absence or inadequacy of the male parent, added to an excessive freedom offered by mothers, end up causing reactive problems in the adaptation behavior to the educational context, to teachers and institutional rules.

Institutions crisis also appears in the family, through a crisis in the authority role and representation. Because of this, it is important for us to understand how children and teenagers in school age perceive and elaborate command and power devices, to which they must submit themselves.

When an authority is perceived as being threatening and illegitimate, the representations over this power imply on practices of reactive-power that take place in the midst of the school dynamics. Bomb explosions in restrooms, destruction of the public patrimony, and physical and moral aggression against teachers create an atmosphere of “law and order” deterioration, of a concerning “moral angst” that stimulates bullying, humiliation of the weaker and different ones. Beyond these aspects, this phenomenon involves the perception over the possibilities of power such as potential, expansion, and endanger for the ego-ideal and self-image of the coming generations.

In Brazil, one of the paradoxical effects of democracy establishment seems to be the dissemination of the idea that arbitrariness is no more a monopoly of the State, and it, democratically, became possible to everyone. For many Brazilians, considering all the ideological and politic aspects, even the idea of legal governments and institutions functioning normally seems to be perceived as a kind of authoritarianism. It is worthwhile to exam how far the credibility deterioration of the social and justice institutions influenced on the disastrous conditions of legal institutions nowadays.

For the people who don’t have good relationships with the government and State – and everybody can’t be sure that has –, the existence of a system of laws and rules which are clear and direct about the justifiable use of force would be an important warrant of protection from the arbitrary violence practiced by the powerful ones. The obedience to this system of laws and rules is named “formal justice”, in contrast to the concerning about the issues in a contest, which is defined as “substantive justice”.

Fidalgo (1996:47) defined politic life as “[...] the life of freedom, which is developed by citizens, as participant and active members in the conduction of the polis business”. Apart from this, private life, which one lives in and among the family, is where the basic needs, such as feeding and reproduction, are fulfilled, in a similar form to the animals. It isn’t living in a group or society that differ men from other animals, once we consider that sociability is a common feature to both of them. Instead, politics would be the distinctive characteristic of men.

Mahalingam (2003:76), proposed an essentialist theory of power. Using brain transplant as paradigm, he examined folk theories of social class among Brahmins and Dalits. The author mentioned that “[…] the study indicates that Brahmins, particularly Brahmin men, believed in the inalterable nature of privileged social class identity, whereas lower-caste participants do not make such a distinction between rich and poor class identity.

These findings suggest that social location and privileged group membership affect a person’s implicit theories of social groups. The participants from the privileged group selectively defined social class. Social location also plays an important role in folk beliefs about social class. In addition, this study demonstrates the role of power in our conceptions of social categories.

Piaget (1972) considers that moral itself indicates intelligence, once relations between moral and intelligence have the same logic of the ones between intelligence and language. Intelligence is as necessary condition to a moral development, although it doesn’t guarantee this alone. Because of this, morality is associated to rationality in three dimensions: the rules, which are concrete and direct formulations, such as the Ten Laws of God, received by Moses; the principles, that represent the spirit of laws, “love each other”, for instance; and the values, that give answers about the duties and meanings of life, allowing to understand from where the principles of rules – which must be followed – are formulated.

According to Crenshaw (1995:97), “[…] intersectionality is central to the study of social class. This study suggests that people from different social locations and historical contexts might think of social categories differently. Intersectionality must be conceptualized as a dynamic, historically constituted, embodied experience of people who occupy different coordinates of power along axes of race, class, gender, and caste. Cultural narratives emerging from these locations are crucial to understand the relationships between social changes, shifts in power dynamics, and notions of social class identity”.

For Koshmann (1978), among the advantages of the Japanese model of social organization, it must be mentioned the formal education offered to everyone, the discipline and obedience based on a deep respect to the established authorities. This model had a positive influence on the economical development, contributing to an ethos formation of national identity and pride, and of solidarity.  

Atkinson (1984:126) states that “[…] the representation of ‘the family’, therefore, revolves around traditional family roles, and the children’s commercials must be dissected to find how the representation is coded to the audience. The mode of address in children’s commercials is very important. Many of the adverts use an intra-diegetic gaze to create the feeling that the commercial is recording a part of family life”.

In the discursive practices of delinquent teenagers, the mentions of desirable goods (such as Nike shoes, fancy clothes, motorcycles, cell-phones) are very frequent, what indicates that these necessities are not from starvation or others material lacks, but from the will of owning happiness and power associated to these goods. For these teenagers, violence is an instrument and a strategy to reach this power.

The researches developed by Walmsley (2004:29) showed that “[…] the social representations perspective enabled us to identify and describe a variety of forms of everyday knowledge used by practitioners in practice. It was particularly useful to identify iconic forms of language use and for understanding the significance of the social context to practitioner thought about action. It was not possible to determine how practitioners interweave scientific and commonsense knowledge.

Determining interrelationships between ideas, such as whether there is a relationship between practitioners’ explanation of the child abuse and neglect causes, and their approach to intervention, was also not possible. A more complex method might have enabled me to identify a limited number of central ideas that inform practice. However, the social representations perspective did permit construction of an interpretive argument to describe for social representations of child protection practice”.

In the same way, searching comprehension over the social representations of power among these teenagers involves thinking about the social context of outrageous rates of corruption, deterioration of public ethics, and the almost complete absence of proper models of people and leaders to be followed. What really happens in the minds of children who live in a context of worshiped soccer players and female models? Why is the number of teenagers by the end of Fourth grade, who doesn’t know how to read, write, or make simple Math operations, increasing day by day?

Schmitz (2003:102) mentions that “[…] a considerable debate has arisen regarding many aspects of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), including the existence, diagnosis, and prevalence of the disorder, the use of medications in treating young children for this disorder, and the long-term side-effects of the medications. A fundamental catalyst in this debate involves the numerous and diverse social representations of ADHD: the differing ways of perceiving what ADHD is, whom it affects, and the most appropriate treatments”.

On the other hand, according to Gomes and Chakur (2005), the studies developed by Piaget on the conscience of lie, as well as the studies on morality (La Taille, 1996), suggest that constraint relationships aren’t the most appropriate ones to offer grounds to contact between teachers and students, and they may interfere, in a negative way, in the moral conscience development, reinforcing the natural narcissism and heteronomy of children.

 This is another reason for teachers to think about their attitudes in classroom, through which they present, very often, an exaggerated authoritarianism or an omission, equally perverse, that confuses and disorientates students about their own behaviors and attitudes.

Therefore, it is important to point out that the notion of lie development, begun in childhood, is also present at school, considering that conscience over lie is established during the early development, through the relationship with the environment. So, education may offer conditions for autonomy succeeding heteronomy, and then children may be able to have conscience over the hidden intentions of their actions.

According to Sposito (2002:47), “[...] normative representations, even being focused on young people, don’t reach only them. These representations describe relational universes: young people with the adult world, the former ones being characterized by the power that is exercised in institutions, in which the possibilities of interaction, conflict, and solidarity may oppose among themselves. We must consider that the contest about conceptions still takes place in the public field, in which both young people and adults participate, and including the diversity not only of civil society but also of the State devices, developing actions in this field”.

Sezgi (1995) states that, traumatized children attract especially women who could not take enough care of their children and feel unhappy about their weakness (because of their gender, social position, education, or fate). By this, weeping children were naturally appealing to the spectator of Yesilcam melodramas.

Children protagonists, first of all, connote purity, innocence etc. They are especially represented as naughty fellows but, at the same time, they are cute and reasonable. Moreover, children characters in these films have an ideological function, which is the representation of a bourgeois ideology in an aesthetic form. From the very start, bourgeois class has been affiliated to particular institutions. One of them is the nuclear family. Therefore, nuclear family must be protected on the grounds that they constituted the foundation of the bourgeois states.

That's why, kiddies, who represent the bourgeois family, have to be protected by their families, society, and state. In these films, for instance, when Yumurcak and Gulsah are left alone and defenseless, their neighbors and the State (that is symbolized by the policeman and the judge) take care of them. In this respect, these films provide an orientation for the low-class immigrants. Spectators learn their suitable roles in urban areas.

They have to learn that they must love their children and weep for them; that money does not bring happiness, so they do not hate rich people anymore, only the unhappy; that they do not necessarily have to change their social status; that they have to subordinate themselves only to their families, neighbors, and to collaborate with them, despite of the difficulties of life – because only love has the power to transform people.

Following the definition of Spink (1993:86), “[...] in the initial sense, representation is the concrete content perceived by feelings, imagination, memory, or thought; it is, summarily, the reproduction of what is thought.” Social representations of power influence both educational relationships and constitution processes of citizenship and of morality at school, focusing a knowledge that remains hidden, in the limit of disclosure and epistemological criticism, once teachers hardly ever admit critics about their stile of power.

2. Justification

The high rates of homicides involving children and teenagers in Brazil have been notified worldwide. In the 1990’s, about 28.3% of the homicides in Latin America were committed against teenagers, from 10 to 19 years, and in 17% of these crimes, teenagers were the authors of the crime. In their statements, teenagers justify the use of violence – as an instrument of intimidation and power – for it being a way of having access to a world and a lifestyle from which they were excluded.

On the other hand, in the USA, homicide victimization rates among 14-17 year-old teenagers increased almost 170% from 1985 to 1993. Since 1993, the victimization rates for older teenagers have declined to levels similar to those experienced from 1976 to 1985. Young people from 18 to 24 year-old experienced the highest homicide victimization rates, a change from the late 1970’s, when the 25-34 year-old had the highest rates.

Homicide victimization rates have generally declined for adults ages (35-49 years, and 50 years and older). Since 1993, homicide victimization rates for older teenagers and young adults have declined, but still remain higher than the levels of the mid-1980’s. 25-34 year-olds are the only group that has experienced an increase in homicide victimization rates since the late 1990’s.

In Brazil, the problems associated to fatal violence among the population of children and teenagers present themselves as an epidemic, a complex phenomenon that made the social analysis of youth and social policies on violence prevention and control an urgent issue for the State.

Zaluar (1994), in her study on homicides in Rio de Janeiro city, noticed that most part of the people who were involved in violence and crimes began this path in their childhood. The issue of absence of the father-image figure is articulated with the lack of limits and non-prohibition of primary aggressive impulses. Several researches indicate that, in the past decades, the number of teenagers who were involved in fatal violence has progressively increased.

Firearms worshiping, identification with the aggressor, the drug-dealer, and the criminal image; as well as the refusal towards the school institution, and, the despise of knowledge are found among a great part of the students of public schools. This justifies the investigation in the field of practices and representations of power among this population of children and teenagers.

Disorganized growth and urbanization of big cities have influenced on the exclusion constitution of great part of population social context. Children are the most affected by this precarious social structure. Most part of young people lives in the outskirts of cities and doesn’t have the ways of getting jobs; and, therefore, they are often set in a savage struggle for survival, in which, very often, crime appears as the only possibility.

Considering that crime became a possible option in the imaginary of children and teenagers, probably these representations were constructed during the childhood development, in relationships and representations invested with affection, established with important figures, such as the parents. So, it is important to understand the constitution and establishment of the power notion in this period of transition, from the concrete operations to the formal ones, from orientations and directions to law and order, in order to develop the sense and meaning of authority, and to maintain morality and educational work.

3. Objectives

a) Understanding the social representations of power, teaching and violence in a group of 50 (fifty) students attending public Elementary Schools, from 9 to 11 years old; and comprehending how they signify social and educational practices, and the relationship they establish with authority figures and institutional rules.

b) Helping teachers and educators with power issues, with getting acquaintance with the children and teenagers they teach to, considering their age group, social and economical conditions, and with developing strategies of negotiation, aiming to establish an affirmative power.

4. Methods

This study, by the application of concepts and strategies, aims to investigate, in a multi-disciplinary approach, social practices of violence. In order to do it, the methods of this research are based on representations analysis (Moscovici, 1961), which offers the possibility of understanding social mediation processes. Besides this, we intend to analyze how representations of power influence institutional violence practices, specially focusing authority figures and institutional agents.

The relationship between temporality and science has been discussed lately, focusing paradigmatic transformations and breaks in State and institutions devices, and in the field of ethics and public morality, which tends to affect the image of institutional agents in classroom educational relationships.

Due to a necessity of investigating how teenager students construct their images and values from their authority figures and identification models, the social representations analysis method was developed in this research. The notion of “truth” is put in question through the “sense” concept (Spink, 1993), by which we attempt to comprehend the meanings and senses constructed in interactions related to “power” issues.

5. Procedures

The investigation was developed in two schools, maintained by Ribeirão Preto City Hall that offers both Elementary and Secondary grades. These schools were chosen, with the agreement of the City Hall Education Office, for their offering conditions to develop this research, such as the agreement of the school staff, the possibility of applying questionnaires and of conducting discussion groups with students, and of interviewing and developing activities with teachers, students and their parents on “power” issues.

These schools have active principals and educational coordinators that develop projects on health and citizenship education, and cultural activities; which allowed the research not being only a datum collect, but also a process of dialogue with these schools and with the people that are part of them. The research had two phases, with distinct instruments applied in each one:

a) Institutional dynamics analysis, in order to comprehend the forms of relationship established by teachers, other school employees, and principal with the context of this research: the school. Participant observation of teachers meetings, in order to register episodes of violence and humiliation, difficulties with the authority exercise in classroom and at school, complaints about discipline control, and evaluation of teaching and learning conditions.

b) Application of semi-structured questionnaires on 50 (fifty) students from two grade groups among which were reported the greatest number of complaints of indiscipline and violence. The objective of this application was to investigate the constants and invariants in interpretations and representations of power, present in the imaginary of these students, and how they perceive authority and power figures. The questions focused the relationship established with these institutions, with violence episodes, and the perceptions the students have of teachers, coordinators, principals, and parents.

6. Results

The schools of this research were founded in the 1940’s, carrying a tradition of having many students (about 3,000), offering both Elementary and Secondary grades, and having experienced and competent teachers in their staff. These schools used to seek quality and excellence, with many students having performances as good as the students from private schools on government exams.

Today, due to the consequences of the educational democratization – specially to lower classes –, and to the great increase in the number of attending students not being followed by adaptations in the structure, theses schools present overcrowded classrooms (40 students, in average), sultry and noisy blocks, creating an unfavorable environment to educational activities.

According to some teachers, the yells and noises from outside (from the sports court, the inner yard, among other places), added to the classroom noises, creates a deafening environment. These schools are located on historical buildings, because of their architectural characteristics, which present a great space, but nowadays they show evident deterioration.

The principals are not elected by the school community, being nominated by the City Hall Education Office, through indication of town councilors. Because of this, they don’t have legitimacy, don’t represent the school community, and, very often, don’t have an educational project.

There is a constant instability and changes of people in this function, once the principal nomination is part of the town politics, of the power relationships among mayor and town councilors. The principal doesn’t fulfill his role of leading the planning and execution of an educational project, remaining bounded to administration tasks, mainly constituting a bureaucratic and disciplinary power.

On the other hand, the educational coordinators have, as function, the orientation role in indiscipline episodes, and they aren’t enough – there are two for each school – to develop the educational coordination work they are supposed to do. This school power doesn’t elaborate educational action plans. Instead, it follows the City Hall’s determinations and orders, and acts mostly in specific conflicts of the school routine.

The analysis of the occurrences registers indicates a great number of students sent to the principal’s office due to episodes of indiscipline, intimidations or threats, cursing, offenses, and aggressions.

According to the collected datum developed by the educational coordinators, the amount of students sent to the principal office, in the first half of the first term of 2004, only among the morning grades, added up to 117 a month, or 6 occurrences a day, in average.

In most part of the cases, the occurrences were about small indiscipline episodes, usually conflicts among students, disrespect, humiliation, and insult to the teacher, and, even, episodes of generalized fight involving a hole classroom.

The observation of the school and classroom dynamics demonstrated how lonely is the teachers’ educational work, being diminished only by sharing difficulties they find and suggestions of procedures with other teachers.

The coordinators offer very little support for the everyday exercise of educational authority, and, because of this, teachers tend to alienate themselves from their social role, and to exempt themselves from dealing with classroom problems, which are necessary for the process of knowledge transmission and assimilation.

The culture of individualism and unconcern, by which the effort and merit of teachers are not considered important, creates a situation of low motivation and deception. Not being able to count on the support from institutional hierarchy and school staff, and frequently facing competition among the colleagues, teachers often become scapegoat victims of students and older teachers that consider themselves owners of the power at school. Once it is not recognized and legitimated, the teacher’s power ends up fading away, and becoming insufficient for educational and disciplinary demands.

The great distance existent between students, on one side, and teachers and principal, on the other, allows very little communication and interaction, which causes discontentment among the students with the lack of institutional power articulation, specially on the issues about discipline control and the development of activities to offer new dynamics to school.

Due to the principals being nominated, and not elected, the power they exercise is bound to bureaucracy, and creates breaks and discontinuities in the processes of orders. This affects the way teachers handle the classroom, because, for their not being supported by the principal on their disciplinary decisions, they give up from trying to resolve behavior problems during class, and end up sending all problematic students to the principal’s office.

This creates, for the coordination and the principal’s office, a jam in the attendance of such cases, of students with small injuries or health problems, fights between students, small burglaries, disobedience, or direct conflict with teachers. Nowadays, in situations of direct conflict, teachers perceive they have no alternative, but to send problematic students to the principal’s office. Many teachers resent the loss of the power they had to fail a student – in the current educational system, students are evaluated every other year, not being reproved even if presenting low grades – and to expel him from school.

From the observation of teachers’ meetings and from the questionnaires application, it is possible to notice that schools are driven by paradoxical feelings, such as apathy, disbelief, complaint, and nihilism, but also hope and endeavor for changes at school.

This happens as if, in some moments, disbelief took charge of everything and nobody would be able to offer help or even to listen to the complaints teachers had; and, in other moments, the school staff, as collective, enthusiastically got engaged with a common task.

The representation of school as a public space dominated by unconcern, apathy, and stillness isn’t consensual among the school staff, considering that, in institutional meetings, a free debate, ideas agitation, and presentations of issues and change arise.

On the other hand, it is quite interesting and praiseworthy the effort of some teachers who, touched by the severe suffering of some students from family rejection, violence, or abandonment, make great endeavors in order to offer help and support, frequently using their own money.

Constantly teenagers oppose to teachers’ and principal’s solicitations and orders, and don’t accept the limits these impose. Students frequently complain about the omission of teachers and the hole school, and demand a better education and more equipments of leisure and cultural integration at school.

The interviews focused themes of violence, power and education conditions; were developed by researchers, graduate, and post-graduate Psychology students; and were applied on 50 (fifty) students, aiming to apprehend recurrent opinions, emergent themes, and representations of power, violence, and education.

Interviews’ summary

Students = 50 (100%)	%
9 years old	23
10 years old	31
11 years old	19
12 years old	27
Gender	%
Male	46
Female	54
Family constitution	%
Mother and father	74
Only the mother	20
Only the father	2
Others	2
Didn’t answer	2
Violence occurrences
In the neighborhood?	%
There is no violence	18
Assaults and gun shots	42
Murders	14
Fights between neighbors or gangs	44
Thefts and burglaries	14
Physical and sexual aggressions	18
Verbal aggressions	12
Drug traffic	20
And at home?                                                                     %
There is no violence	48
Physical aggression (fights between siblings, or parents)	32
Verbal aggression	28
Punishments	22
Drugs (smoking and alcohol)	12
And at school?                                                             %
There is no violence	6
Physical aggressions	24
Verbal aggressions	42
Murders	2
Attempt against the school patrimony	24
Fights among students	56
Environment conditions of school	8
Disrespect against teachers	16
Drug use	4
Prostitution	2
Thefts and burglaries	16
Humiliations, intimidations, and threats	22
Difficulties in learning?	%
Environment conditions of school	70
Physical conditions (work, feeling sleepy or tired)	14
Difficulties in learning	12
Difficulties with teachers or school staff	28
Lack of family support	14
Lack of teachers	16
Frequent interruptions of class	12
Didn’t answer	2
There are no difficulties	4
Fear and insecurity feeling	10
Improvements suggested by students                               %
Psychological support for teachers	2
Extra-academic activities (sports, cultural events, etc)	20
Structure improvements	18
Sports	10
Freedom of speech	10
Improvement of the administration school staff	48
Didn’t answer	4
Punishing indiscipline and expelling bad students	34
Reformulation of educational structure	36
Increase mutual respect	18
Increase security	12
Identification figures?                                                      %
Parents	48
Parents and teachers	20
Teachers	18
Others	12
Didn’t answer	2

7. Final considerations

Most part of the teachers (80%) is in the age band of 36 to 55 years old, which indicates potential experience and maturity, as well as problems of accommodation and stability, inherent to this age and to the perspective of retirement. According to Sato (1993), the representation of work as something hard may cause disillusion, stress, and early retirement.

Most part of the teachers are women (90%), significant part is married (66%), 14% is divorced, and 20% is single. 68% of the teachers considers the neighborhood violent, most part (88%) considers that there is no violence at their homes. The violence they find at school is attributed to the students, to their fights (60%), their disrespects (34%), and their attempts against the school patrimony (30%).

Among the students that participated of this research, most part is the age band of 9 to 12 years old, due to the investigation remaining restricted to students from Third to Sixth grade, because most part of the indiscipline incidents occurred among these grades and age band. Because of this, evaluation and intervention among these students became a priority.

The gender distribution was quite even, 46% boys and 54% girls. The students consider their neighborhood violent (44%), and perceive violence in their families, in verbal and physical aggression (42%). On the other hand, they perceive their being involved in violence at school, once they associate this to verbal aggressions (42%) and the fights (56%), actions committed by students.

Most part of the students consider environment conditions the greatest difficulties of their school (70%), mentioning both noise level and sultry classrooms, and the boring and disorganized classes they have. On the other hand, they propose improvements of the school staff (48%), punishing indiscipline, expelling bad students from school (34%), and an educational structure reformulation (36%).

48% of the interviewed children and teenagers had the family as their main theme, associated to an environment that depicts care, nourishing, recreation and happiness. The parents are represented as images of protection, love, and worthy of identification. For 30%, the main focus was about school.

Authority images are associated to violence, absence, abandonment, neglect, and affective apathy, due to a negative experience with the parental image, or its substitute. For 22%, the main theme is about nature and its necessity to be preserved, the urgency to stop the current pollution and destruction.

Significant part of the students (24%) mentions the absence of the father. Affective necessities, orientations, limits, and cheering, which they should have with the father, are transferred to the teachers they consider “cool”. In this process of approach to the teacher, dialogue, jokes, greetings, tenderness, respect, and being able to count on this person are perceive as devices of a friendly and sheltering power.

For students who miss a sheltering father figure, the teacher represents a model of identification. When they get frustrated with their expectation of friendship and shelter, many sorts of representations are produced, such as “authoritarian”; “doesn’t like to play”; “angry”; “doesn’t let us talk”; “doesn’t listen to our problems”; “doesn’t hug or kiss”; “doesn’t want the best for everybody”; “they are boring and mean”.

The students who were rejected and maltreated by their parents search, in a substitutive reparatory process, an affective and sheltering authority in the image of their teachers. The power representations are based on the opposition of “good” and “evil”. The “good” teachers are the ones who are perceived as being close to the students, considered “cool”, and know how to manage affective relationships.

On the other hand, the “bad” teachers are the ones who “disrespect and curse the students”, and keep classroom discipline through threats and humiliations. As concluding remarks, it is possible to state that negative representations of power, either from family, or from school, impel psychological processes of “aggression and avoidance” in these children and teenagers.

The social representations of violence show an exaggerated fear, a criminalization process of the indiscipline episodes, due to the apathy of the public authorities, usually taken by authoritarianism, and by the difficulty in carrying out the teaching, presenting, therefore, a low school performance.

The impotence in the teaching and educating role increases the perception of the aggression risks, creating difficulties in the communication, and spreading the perception of the public space at school as a place of concrete and symbolical conflicts. The representation of violence as a phenomenon external to the school dynamics exempts the teacher from the preventive and mediation role. The individualism blocks the collective perception of the social function, and the representation of catastrophe as a possibility of its own overcoming. (FAPESP) 

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