CHALLENGES AND PERSPECTIVES FOR RURAL YOUTH FACING VIOLENCE IN A SCHOOL IN THE AMAZON REGION OF PARÁ

Abstract

This study analyzes the multiple manifestations of violence in the school environment from the perspective of students from a rural school located in the municipality of Igarapé-Miri, in the state of Pará. The research employs a qualitative, descriptive, and exploratory approach, involving nine students in their final year of elementary school. Empirical data were collected through semi-structured interviews, direct observation in the school environment, and systematic field diary entries. The main objective is to investigate how young people from rural areas experience, perceive, and give meaning to violence in the context of rural education, analyzing its origins, implications for the educational process, and possibilities for coping within the school environment. The results show that violence manifests itself both in its structural dimension (expressed by the physical precariousness of the school, lack of regular school transportation, insufficient school meals, and territorial exclusion) and in its symbolic and relational dimension, marked by practices of bullying, harassment, unequal punishments, and silencing discourses. It is observed that the school, although permeated by control and disciplinary mechanisms, also constitutes a space of resistance, affection, and the production of youthful subjectivities, where students construct strategies for coping with and reinterpreting their experiences. It is concluded that understanding violence in rural Amazonian schools requires going beyond the isolated reading of the act, recognizing it as an effect of historical networks of power, inequality, and exclusion that permeate the territory and the lives of the individuals.