Solving “less serious” conflicts in the school environment is a measure that can help to prevent future violent attacks. The assessment is by sociologist Valéria Cristina de Oliveira, researcher and professor at the Faculty of Education at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). According to her, it is necessary to give voice to students who are victims of micro-violence in their daily lives, whether practiced by adult professionals or colleagues. “Even if it is not an event of serious violence today, it could unfold in the future into another of serious violence as a result of silencing”, he said this Monday (29), during a debate with online transmission that brought together UFMG researchers from different areas. They presented data from various studies and held a discussion on the theme “For a culture of peace: combating violence in education and misinformation”. According to one of the surveys mentioned, released last week by the non-governmental organization Instituto Sou da Paz, there have been 24 attacks on schools in the country in the last 22 years. More than half of these episodes, however, are concentrated in the last four years. In most of them, the aggressors are students or former students with an average age of 16 years. One of the cases that had strong repercussions this year occurred in March, when one person died and five were injured at the Thomazia Montoro State School, in the Vila Sônia neighborhood of São Paulo. The crime was committed by one of his students, aged 13. In recent years, similar episodes that generated great commotion in the country were also promoted by students or former students, such as those registered in Aracruz (ES) last year and in Suzano (SP) in 2019. A recent study by the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) outlined the most frequent profile among the perpetrators of the attacks: young white men, generally with low self-esteem and unpopularity at school. It was also observed that many of them had signs of undiagnosed mental disorders or without proper follow-up. These are situations that can develop or be aggravated by the difficulty of relationships in schools, which can occur, for example, with those who are targets of bullying. Valéria is a member of the Center for the Study of Crime and Public Safety (Crisp) and the Nucleus for Research on School Inequalities (Nupede), two scientific groups at UFMG that carry out investigations on the subject. “The accumulation of minor acts of violence leads to difficulties in living together. The deterioration of the social fabric can be the negative consequence of several less serious events”, he reiterates. According to a study carried out by Crisp in 2012, in state schools in all regions of Minas Gerais, 48% of adolescent students declared that they had been victims of bullying, 20% that they had suffered physical aggression and 40% that they had been robbed or stolen in the last few years. 12 months. In addition, more than 30% said they had been the target of verbal violence from peers or teachers. Cases involving these aggressions with the use of firearms and with more victims are not rare, in which other less serious situations occurred previously, poorly managed or without any management of the conflicts. “This occurs, among other things, because we haven’t had the opportunity to hear and listen to the main targets of these small attacks. The profile of these aggressors tends to converge to someone who has limited social insertion at school, who has been a victim of bullying, who suffers exclusion of some nature”, says Valéria. Solutions At the end of last year, 11 researchers from universities in different states of the country prepared a document proposing concrete strategies for government action. Coordinated by professor at the Faculty of Education at the University of São Paulo (USP), Daniel Cara, they stressed that the cases should be classified as right-wing extremism, as most of them involve co-option of teenagers by neo-Nazi groups that rely on the idea of supremacy white and male and encourage them to carry out the attacks. The presence of symbols associated with far-right ideologies has been recurrent in these violent episodes. According to the document, these groups disseminate a discourse that values prejudice, discrimination, the use of force and firearms, directly and indirectly encouraging aggressive and violent acts. “It is necessary to understand that the process of co-option by the extreme right takes place through virtual interactions, in which the teenager or young person is frequently exposed to extremist content disseminated in messaging applications, games, discussion forums and social networks”, record the researchers. According to them, measures will only be effective if they consider this scenario. In a search for the word “school” on the Chamber of Deputies website, Valéria found 312 bills presented in 2023. SC) resulted in the deaths of four children. The party with the most propositions is Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL). Next come União Brasil and Progressistas (PP), which made up the support base during the former president’s government. “Not all of these projects are linked to the issue of violence in schools, but the coincidence between the peak of presentations and the date of the attack shows us that these events were extremely relevant for there to be a political movement precisely of those groups that have been identified as associated to speeches that encourage violent behavior. And most bills suggest interventions in the field of security. There are many proposals for the use of metal detectors, the installation of cameras, the presence of police in the school space. These are intervention strategies that are not necessarily effective”, says the UFMG researcher. Solutions of this nature have been criticized by several specialists, who note that the increase in the security apparatus in schools has not solved the problem in the United States, where episodes have been happening for a longer time and more frequently. Valéria cites studies in which factors such as previous violence, rejection by peers and negative school climate are associated with cases. “Having more public safety devices doesn’t get around that,” she says. Among his suggestions to face the current scenario is the construction of communication channels to listen and welcome the victims of school conflicts, greater focus on learning for all and not on disciplinary punishment, attention to the principles of equity and justice and the development of policies of health and care for comprehensive community care and mental health promotion. She also advocates greater restriction on access to firearms and investigation of allegations of the actions of groups that encourage violence on social networks. Valéria says that it is necessary to create new mechanisms to record cases of conflicts and violence in schools, which allow for increased monitoring and discussion of solutions, since only the most serious episodes appear in police records. In a mapping of occurrences registered by the Municipal Guard of Belo Horizonte in 2015, the most frequent events in municipal schools were damage to property, acts of fact and threats. Disinformation During the debate, researcher Geane Carvalho Alzamora, linked to the Department of Communication at UFMG, observed that the circulation of disinformation and hate speech must be faced with media literacy. According to her, research with young people has already revealed the difficulty of many in being able to differentiate a text with true information from another with fake news. “It’s not enough to deny. You don’t fight disinformation with truth. You fight disinformation with education”, she says. Geane assesses, however, that educational institutions need a strategy to deal with this challenge. “It’s not a question of educating people to use the media. We need to understand what young people are doing with the media. Schools today are oblivious to this problem”. UFMG Law School professor Fernando Jayme defended the treatment of school conflicts from a perspective of restorative justice. He assessed that the punitive system is flawed and that it is necessary to bet on dialogue and mediation within educational institutions. “This goes through the re-empowerment of schools. Violence and misinformation have left the school very vulnerable. The school is an environment that welcomes diversity and is a territory of human interactions tensioned by different individualities. Conflicts represent windows of opportunity to reframe relationships , transforming them, restoring them, repairing them”.
Agência Brasil
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