FAMÍLIA E ESCOLA: UMA ANÁLISE CRÍTICA ACERCA DE COMO ESSAS DUAS INSTITUIÇÕES SE RELACIONAM NA CONTEMPORANEIDADE

Abstract

This research has as investigative question how the relationship between family and school is established in contemporaneity, considering, above all, the determinants that mark the condition of existence of these institutions in the Brazilian class society governed by the logic of capital accumulation. It assumes that both the family and the school do not exist in isolation from the social sphere and, precisely for this reason, they are subject to the influences of the society they are part of. Thus, the general objective of this investigation is to analyze how the relationship between family and school is established and how these two institutions are articulated in contemporary capitalist society. The specific objectives, in turn, are: to resume the historical transformations that took place in the family and in the school, with an emphasis on their existence from the consolidation of capitalist society; identify the importance and, at the same time, the limits of new family arrangements in breaking with the patriarchal culture that sustains the bourgeois nuclear family and, finally, investigate how the relationship between family and school is established, considering the perceptions of those involved in this relationship. This investigation made use of both literature review and field research, and the method that guided the investigative process and its exposition was historical-dialectical materialism. The starting point was a historical review of the transformations that took place in both institutions, with an emphasis on their existence in the capitalist societal model, and later interviews were carried out with representatives of families and professionals of public elementary education in Campo Grande (MS). The field research data were organized into three categories: 1) For every 10 mothers, there is 1⁄2 father; 2) What this student had was a problem of family structure; and 3) My expectation is that at school my children will really learn to live in society. The first category discusses gender relations in the relationship between the family and the school, pointing out that the school monitoring of children is a job mostly attributed to women. The second deals with the demands of the school on the family, inferring that the school institution creates and imposes an idealized pattern of family that does not correspond to the concrete and material conditions of a large part of the Brazilian population. The third debate on the purposes of the school is based on the expectations of families, putting the social function of school education under perspective. It is worth signaling that the results found were strongly marked by the pandemic crisis caused by COVID-19, and it is possible to note how this normative ideal of a nuclear family and the sexual division of work that accompanies it affected the living and working conditions of women in times of social distance. Therefore, the aim of this research is to contribute to the reflection of the historical contradictions that permeate the investigated social institutions and how their existence is marked by the determinations of the current societal model.