What is said by what is not said: teaching perspective on violence in everyday school life and its marks

Abstract

The objective of this article is to present paths taken in research on violence at school, carried out in a public school. We developed a narrative review of the literature and semi-structured conversations/interviews with teachers from this school. We follow an evidentiary paradigm, which leads to individualized analyses, where each detail must have its place of visibility, because as an indication, it can leave the margins and assume the center of the discourses. The narratives are linked to the subjects' stories and there are signs that cannot be told with words, but with gestures, deep breaths, pauses, and eyes filled with tears. These “said by the unsaid”, an essential part of the results, suggest that experiencing situations of violence generates impacts that affect the emotional state of victims and can evolve into serious cases of depression. Although, when talking about school violence, what first comes to mind are physical attacks between students and between students and teachers, the data obtained shows that other forms of violence are more common at school and that they generate traumas and scars that are so profound that have repercussions on the lives of victims beyond the school walls.