Why I want my child to go to school this April 20 – 04/20/2023 – Education

I want to start this reflection with the message of Nelson Mandela, a man who dedicated his life to peace, unity and did not succumb to hatred and revenge: “I learned that courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. brave man is not he who is not afraid, but he who conquers that fear”.

Like Mandela, I think we must build dams of courage to stem the tide of fear.

Today I received a statement from my son José, Pandinha’s school. For a week now I’ve been having a discussion with Cynthia who, in the midst of the panic produced, opposes José’s going to school on this fateful April 20th. She consciously considers that he should go, but the mother’s heart and the fear that something unexpected or bad will happen has been speaking louder. I, on the other hand, want him to go. And therein lies the family impasse. Perhaps this should be the conflict experienced by thousands of hearts and homes in the country, in the face of constant threats to the school environment on the internet.

The first alternative is always to claim police at the school. Whatever the political position, this exit became a recurring speech for a terrified population and works as a kind of “calming”. I would say that the medicine even works, at first.

However, research carried out in countries with a history of tragedies involving weapons, young people and schools —such as the United States— has shown that policing schools alone does not solve the problem and, therefore, does not reduce our fear. Based on this, I would like to pose some important questions.

I don’t want to judge here the parents’ legitimate decision to leave their child at home or take him to school. But I would like to dialogue with those who, caring for their children’s safety, do not want to take them to school this April 20th.

Whoever is plotting something for this day must be anticipating or leaving to carry out his plan when the schools are more careless, as happened in the cases of which we have unfortunately become aware. After all, for the 20th, strong security schemes are being set up.

Fear, faced with the threat of the 20th, has a specific function: to make us stay at home. Unfortunately I think it will. However, this further strengthens this wave produced and sustained in the secret and underground environments of the internet. Speaking of which, two things are important:

• We don’t blame video games. If that were the case, we would all be at war over the series and movies we watch every day. My son loves video games, but he also likes music and animals, he is moved when he sees children in pain. He even wanted to donate all the money in his piggy bank to help a homeless family. He is only 7 years old. Recent cases of violence have shown that practitioners are people not connected to games, but involved in clandestine and hidden environments on the internet, without control and regulation, which capture young people with emotional weaknesses vulnerable to the hate agenda.
• Social networks, indeed, deserve a deep debate. We, parents and guardians, have to discuss its uses, limit children and young people’s access to toxic content based on hate speech. We must collectively observe what we consume and avoid falling into the rut of co-option of potential marketable consumers that platforms, through the programming of algorithms, seek at all times.

The more interactions they get, the more these platforms make money. Intense conflicts of ideas or ideologies make the network more agitated, contributing to selling their advertising spaces more expensive.

There is a complex reflection to be made on how we are going to live together and avoid being swallowed up by the consumption logic of the networks, be they products, ideas or behaviors. Everything is merchandise traded on the shelves of the virtual market.

Let’s go back to school. This discussion brought up an issue that we have avoided discussing for some time: the production of hate. I say this with the joy of knowing that my son’s school, Colégio Santa Isabel, took advantage of what happened to demonstrate for peace in the world and in schools, mobilizing parents and students to join a movement of hopes and good feelings.

I deeply hope that this reaction shifts to proactive action, that it is not just when threats of tragedy keep us up at night. May the police not be our only alternative. This even makes the work of public security workers exhaustive and inefficient.

I work in favelas all over the country and I confidently say that the best results in reducing violence rates come from schools where parents and guardians are actively involved in school life; where the school community is part of the lives of students, teachers and staff; where there is acceptance, listening and shared decision-making, as well as responsibilities; where there is a collective effort for the school to train students for life, not just for results with blue marks.

The school needs to be open to being managed, also, by parents and students, its direct users. We need to think about a school beyond the walls. We have valuable experiences. Nobody alone has a monopoly on the truth and the only way out.

My resistance to the logic of fear is not the absence of courage, as Mandela said, but the need to control it. I do not deny the reality of the existence of weapons in schools, on the outskirts and in the favelas of Brazil. The reality of the public school has been crossed by violence for some time. However, many are now taking more weapons to schools to “protect themselves from attacks”, when, in fact, it is hate speech and the logic of violence that give strength to these actions —as well as the social conditions in which we live, which they produce a legion of predisposed young people who are easily recruited into these environments of radicalization and hatred.

I think that the 20th should be the turning of the page in this story, from a school that has long educated only to consume and accumulate things individually, to a school that educates for tolerance, for welcoming the different, the friend in silence or the that doesn’t fit.

After all, what are our schools? Learning spaces in diversity or deposits of domesticated human beings?

On this day, we could hold meetings or lives on everyday school and family issues, such as psychosocial suffering, family dilemmas, violence and its various forms of manifestation.

We all have our fears.

I repeat: I don’t want to judge who has more or less courage, nor classify those who chose to take their children to school as negligent or those who chose not to take them to school as fearful. I only hope that we can be willing to build other logics of coexistence and socialization.

May our collective be a learning environment and the school, peace, welcome and acceptance of the different that lives in each of us.

I hope that Cynthia changes her mind and not only takes José, but that she is there as a participant in the program that the school offers, a 20th day of peace, love and hope!