Violence and Human Rights: The place of restorative practices in schools

Abstract

The article problematizes the notions of violence and human rights and emphasizes restorative practices as a strategy for resolving conflicts in schools. In the case of violence, it questions the legitimacy of institutional knowledge and practices which, in the hope of resolving conflicts, tend to separate and unilaterally contrast the figures of aggressor and victim, placing an inventory of punitive, blaming and retributive legal and moral truths and conceptions on the former. With regard to human rights, the question focuses on the persistence of academic-political knowledge that gives greater relevance and visibility to civil and political rights than to social rights, the absence of which can have an impact on different forms of violence among public high school students. Based on a theoretical-conceptual approach of critique and re-signification of the themes of violence and human rights and the presentation of data related to action research in schools, the aim of the article is to contribute to the inclusion of different forms of knowledge and local experiences in the processes of understanding and inducing non-violent public policies for resolving conflicts on the school floor.

Keywords:
violence; human rights; secondary education; restorative practices.