Educação e discriminação racial : convergências e divergências na percepção de famílias negras e brancas no município de Cuiabá

Abstract

This research, presented to the Education Institute of the Federal University of Mato Grosso, belongs to the Education, Culture and Society area, Social Movements, Policies and Popular Education research line, and aims at knowing and analyzing the convergences and divergences that exist in the black and white families’ perceptions about education and racial discrimination in the school context. This study aims at opening a space to listen to popular class families about their perceptions in relation to school, promoting discussions of the problems that they consider to be relevant. This study The research is of the comprehensive type and was carried out in the municipal public schools of Cuiabá/MT. The choice of the schools from where the families, subjects of this research, were selected was because they were in peripheral districts, where there is a large concentration of families belonging to the poorest levels of society which is considered a relevant data for the research. The methodology is qualitative and the procedures used for the development of this study are: observation in the school environment, socioeconomic questionnaire and individual interviews with the members of the students’ families. The observation happened with the aim of selecting the research subjects In relation to the questionnaire, the mother represents the family and, in the interviews , all the members (father, mother and children) participate with testimonies, except some fathers that claim that the children’s education is the mother’s responsibility or that they are absent in their families’ lives. Besides giving the interviews, the children also drew pictures about the perception of discrimination that they suffered in the school environment. The results obtained reveal convergences in the speech of the black and white families regarding the valorization of formal education, the projects and expectations of school formation for their children. There is also convergence in relation to dissatisfaction in the school meetings since they consider that the schools give priority to the students’ behavior and do not pay attention to the parents’ expectations in relation to the educational process. The divergences happen in the way the families deal with racial discrimination. The white families little or hardly ever notice the incidence of the phenomenon. The black families notice, complain about the types of treatments given to their children in the school environment and, in some cases, teach their children to react to this kind of situation, in others they are quiet and teach their children to ignore it, because they see the indifference of the ones who are in charge of the schools in relation to this phenomenon. One of the contributions for this study is to understand the relation family-school, mainly popular class families and the schools where the process of their children/students formation happens. The relevance of this study is based on the opportunity given to the families of expressing their opinions in relation to the school, since the countless researches that involve these institutions come from the teachers and school’s values.