Educação e religiosidade evangélica nos meios populares

Abstract

This research studies the possible relationship between religious participation and the construction of school expectations and investments. The objective was to apprehend the possible effects of the evangelical religiosity on school expectations and ways of relating to education in popular families. The object of this research is born from the intersection of two sets of analyzes: the sociology of education and studies on evangelical religions. The works of the first set maintain that popular families, because of their exposal to daily social needs and by being more culturally distant from school, would maintain an ambivalent relationship with schooling: a relationship of domination, accepting school authority and, on the other hand, do not have the fruitful means to invest in education, their efforts being distant from practices valued in the school space. Research on evangelical religion points to some characteristics of this expanding phenomenon in the poorest and least educated groups, indicating that the evangelical way of life can have influences on other domains of social life. Marked by asceticism and by the institutional discourse of the churches that outlines a positive projection for the future, evangelical religiosity would produce dispositions of behavior similar to school expectations. Considering these analyzes, the empirical research was carried out in a metropolitan periphery, in a territory where it was also possible to consider the variation of the social position of the different families investigated. The fieldwork was developed with the recognition of the churches in the territory and, later, investigating the evangelical families with school children. The main conclusions are: three fractions of the popular classes were identified, which are related in different ways to school education and religiosity; most of the churches in the territory are local, small, with leaders from the neighborhood themselves, many with low schooling, and distance themselves from the institutional discourse of the large evangelical churches pointed out by literature. For the interviewed families, evangelical religiosity is associated with negative strategies to avoid the ills of the territory; however, school investments depend on other types of strategies, positive ones, oriented towards the future. Only the families of the highest fractions of the popular classes are able to guarantee positive and negative strategies, the other groups do not have positive strategies and, therefore, their school ambitions are lower. This better positioned group has the Higher Education as its school horizon. The intermediary social group aspires to complete high school, attempts to remain in the education system until the end of compulsory schooling; and has negative strategies, for which it has the means to ensure some effectiveness and relies on religiosity as a support to avoid what they consider the dangers of the neighborhood. As for the lowest group, it cannot be said that they are able to undertake negative strategies, b...