Teacher must know how to use a gun, says half of the population – 06/19/2023 – Education

Teachers, coordinators and school inspectors should receive training to deal with weapons in cases of attacks on schools, says 50% of the Brazilian population. Another 23% are against.

The survey was carried out by Instituto IDEIA, and the result was presented this Sunday (18th) during the Brazil Forum UK, an event organized by Brazilian students in Oxford to discuss social, economic and political issues.

The sample was collected between the 15th and 16th of May this year, by telephone. 1,581 people were interviewed, all over the age of 16, distributed across the five regions of the country. The margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points.

Respondents were also asked whether education workers should have easy gun ownership — 44% disagreed, 24% agreed, 24% and 31% said they were indifferent.

Possible solutions to combat attacks on schools were presented to participants. When asked about the possibility of tougher penalties for perpetrators of attacks, 83% said they were in favor.

With regard to lowering the age of criminal responsibility, 69% said it would help curb attacks.

Asked about the need for more policing in schools, 79% agreed. In addition, 74% believe that institutions should have private security.

“The study indicates that Brazilian public opinion is still very helpless by the State in terms of safety in schools”, says Mauricio Moura, founder of IDEIA. “The vacuum of concrete solutions on a daily basis is the driving force behind the support for controversial and little-proven alternatives at the international level,” he added.

Moura also said that the institute carried out the survey with two objectives: the first, in the short term, is to subsidize the debates at the Brazil Forum UK; the second, to help promote public policies that dialogue with the country’s perceptions and priorities.

ATTACKS ON SCHOOLS SCARE THE COUNTRY

On the morning of this Monday (19), a shooting attack at the State College Professor Helena Kolody, in Cambé, in northern Paraná, left a 16-year-old student dead and another student of the same age injured.

The shooter, a 21-year-old former student of the school, was arrested. Until the beginning of the afternoon there was no information about the motivations for the attack.

It was the morning of March 27 of this year, a Monday, when a 13-year-old student advanced with a knife on classmates and teachers at the state school Thomazia Montoro, in Vila Sônia, west of São Paulo. He killed teacher Elisabeth Tenreiro, 71, with blows from behind.

Nine days later, a 25-year-old man invaded the Cantinho Bom Pastor day care center, in Blumenau (SC), and killed four children. A hatchet and switchblade were used in the action.

In the aftermath of these attacks, alerts about attempted attacks of this type went up throughout the country, prompting actions by the public authorities. The Ministry of Justice, for example, carried out an operation in which it detained 225 people, in addition to subpoenaing another 694. In a few weeks, almost a thousand social network profiles were taken down for inciting hatred and promoting speeches in favor of massacres.