"A lot of shooting"

teaching histories of democracy in the periphery

Abstract

We present partial results from the research project "The Unfinished Lesson: democracy, utopia, and History teaching" (2020-2024), based on questionnaires answered by 7th and 8th-grade students from four public schools in Porto Alegre and its Metropolitan Region, juxtaposed with the school's Political-Pedagogical Projects and the testimonies of each teacher, who are four of the authors of this article. We analyzed the responses regarding age, race/color, gender, and sexuality, also socio-economic conditions, and student's opinions about their neighborhood and school, to discuss the conceptions of the periphery that permeate our classes. The concept of periphery by Tiaraju D'Andrea and the thoughts of Freire, hooks, and Xakriabá on educational relationships supported our listening exercise. We identified a higher proportion of black and brown students than of white students in relation to the average in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the same holding true for the ratio of inhabitants per house. There is more diversity in terms of sexuality than in terms of gender. Students demonstrated a critical understanding of scarcity, violence, injustices, and the lack of minimal structures in their homes, schools, and the neighborhood. Good teachers, learning experiences, meals, beautiful school spaces, and friends are praised, perhaps indicating that the utopia of a good life and a good school is emerging. These peripheries are places of tension between the lack of almost everything and human relationships with their affections (positive or not) to continue producing life. We reject the normalization of scarcity and the romanticization of daily resistance. With the support of Beatriz Nascimento, we understand these schools and peripheries as new forms of quilombos, where we seek, with respect, to create history classes for the meeting of righteous anger, dreams, and history.