Majority of students have witnessed scenes of racial prejudice in school
Conceição Freitas
The majority public school students from the nation’s capital of Brasilia, 55.7%, have witnessed scenes of racial prejudice at school. Among black students, 30% said they had suffered discrimination. The survey, conducted in 2008, surveyed 9,937 students and 1,330 teachers from the 5th grade of elementary school to the 3rd year high school. The research was conducted by the Secretary of Education in partnership with Rifla (Rede de Informação Tecnológica Latino-Americana or Latin American Technological Information Network). The result is a book of 495 pages, revealing traumas, and uncovering secrets: violence and co-existence in schools.
Among the students interviewed, 45% said they were brown (pardo/mulatto), 13% defined themselves as black (preto) 22% white (branco). Among teachers, 42% defined themselves as white, 37% recognized themselves as brown and 10% proclaimed themselves black.
A universe of racial diversity, the schools are reproducing the discrimination and prejudice that exists outside of the schools. “To what extent is the school being consistent with its social function when it is proposed to be a space for the preservation and incentive of Brazilian cultural and racial diversity?”, asks Miriam Abramovay, the research coordinator.
Three months ago, the Department of Education created a coordination of diversity in the Escola de Aperfeiçoamento dos Profissionais de Educação (EAPE or the School of Improvement of Education Professionals) in order to prepare teachers, counselors and employees to act on three themes identified as priorities: sexuality, gender and ethnic-racial. “We will raise the demand of schools, provide training and assistance to teachers so they know how to handle conflicts of diversity without derailing the difference, and at the same time, turning them into an pedagogical enrichment process and not of exclusion from school,” says Professor Leila Dark, one of the coordinators of diversity.
All public schools of the Federal Disctrict already adhere to Law 10.639/03, which made compulsory the study of Afro-Brazilian history and culture in primary and secondary education.
Source: Black Women of Brazil
Source: Black Women of Brazil
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