How Violent Epistemology Shapes Schooling Systems: The Development of Public Schooling in Brazil and São Paulo

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates, through the example of the development of schooling in Brazil and São Paulo, how violent epistemology shapes schooling systems. This history is traced from the use of schooling to catechise the indigenous population and provide a pliant work force during the colonial era, through the failure to provide education from the mid-eighteenth to late nineteenth centuries due to a lack of perceived economic need, the later development of schooling as a means to progress the ideological endeavours of an elite aspiring to ‘civilise the nation’, the establishment of typical nineteenth century style schooling to meet the needs of industrial capitalism, and finally the introduction of neoliberal technocratic reforms aimed to depoliticise students and train them for the labour market, along with legal, physical, and coercive repression of teacher and student dissent. The role of violent epistemology in these processes is discussed, including how this has resulted in successive reforms without sufficient regard to particular contextual needs, as well as non-conducive circumstances within schools and the neutralisation of attempts to enact less violent epistemic practice.