O vermelho é a cor de todos. Descendentes portugueses e açorianos em Santa Maria: etnia, educação familiar e escola

Abstract

The goal of this research is to investigate the connection between family education and ethnic values formation through the transmission of cultural elements over generations. The relevance of this work is to provide elements for teaching practice in order to better deal with the time after time conflicts in the school environment. The children values formation starts in the environment where they live either at home or school. This is the first opportunity of developing on psychosocial aspects concerning autonomy, conscience of choice, and safety in attitudes. The school should be ready to facilitate this process since it is a place for the crucial period in the formation of the individual. This paper intends to contribute to an education that results positively for a peaceful multicultural relation. The information was collected through interviews made with Azorean and Portuguese descendants who live in Santa Maria town, Rio Grande do Sul state. These families were chosen as collaborators because they are descendants from the first families who settled the South of Brazil (1740). Therefore, they are important characters in the local culture structure. The search for information in the recent past through the memory of the present can only be achieved through autobiographies or facts collected during the interviews. The aspect of Oral History as Oral Interview is an approach that allows the reference to the facts that the collaborators have lived or held information from their visions and experiences. The information flows from memories and construction of representations about the past. This was the chose methodology to get the necessary data for analysis. The interviews followed a script of questions with three points: the recognition of themselves, the recognition of the other, and the relationship between themselves and the other. The evaluation of the data indicates that the mentioned families didn t emphasize practices related to respect in their ethnic relations. Values such as honesty and work were highlighted. In the presented schoolchildren situations a lot of manifestations of discrimination didn t receive adequate attention in order to vanish or overcome the problem. Therefore, according to the analysis of narratives, it was concluded that families and schools mentioned in this work have not presented the solution for social conflict as institution educators. School education has contributed to the permanence of discriminatory situations taking into account it has being negligent and/or not showing worry on this issue. For this reason it is restated the necessity of school to strongly/deeply dedicate to this question through planned actions, accomplishing one of its key roles that is education for social relations as well as respect for differences.