Governamento das famílias: a produção do aluno “problema” no discurso escolar

Abstract

The current dissertation, Governing families: production of the student problem in school speech, is included in the study field which aims to disnaturalize the relations established between family and school social, historical and cultural constitutions that are used as strategies of the population s management. Based on the school speeches, coming mainly from the Register Book of SOE (Educational Orientation Service), the research points out some strategies performed at school, in order to control, to rule, to govern, to discipline and, to regulate the behavior of students and their families. Such analytical use was constituted from the perspective of Cultural Studies, with a Post-structural branch. The main conceptual tools adopted are the Foucalt s notions of discipline and govern power as well as the rule notion, employed by Edwald (1993). I showed, by means of the analysis of these speeches that the school utilizes the disciplinary instruments hierarchic surveillance, normalizing sanction and exams to govern and to discipline the behavior of its students and their family members. From this strategy, the school ends up producing problematic students, who have become the majority of those students. Another strategy noticed in the school speeches was the one of a risk management. It works from the detection of a risk factor and the actions taken to prevent and/or to manage the possible risks like school evasion, failure and poor school performance. Experts who act not only inside but also outside the school are involved in this process. They provide a scientific guarantee, identifying the risk factors and dealing with them. From the identification of these strategies performed in school, it was possible to perceive a to and fro movement with the family. It is called to school to manage the risk but it is also the target f this risk management. Thus, the family is ruled by the school, too. The speeches still show that this movement happens towards the order. The research proposes some discussions about this relation between the family and the school in our contemporary times. From these considerations it is possible to realize that the surveillance does not only occur for the student but also makes the family a constant object of surveillance. Therefore, the family is included in an increasing discursive net, that scans and fractionates the family relations and make of these space the local (locus) of exams and diagnosis of a conduct which are connected with the production of a supposed student s lack of function.