Escolarização e habitus de classe: um estudo de caso do abandono escolar no período de ensino remoto (Paraíba 2020-2021).

Abstract

School dropout in the period in which remote classes were established due to Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Brazil had a 3% increase among young people aged 6 to 18 years when comparing the first quarter of 2020 with the first quarter of 2021 (ALVES, 2021). Those aspects were considered as the context of this research, which focuses on the understanding of school dropouts in an Elementary School located in a small town in Cariri Ocidental Paraiba. We used as a theoretical contribution Pierre Bourdieu’s (2007) concepts on differential school performance, which emphasizes important elements of class habitus as a social determinant of school performance: social origin and cultural capital conveyed by the family. Our research is of a qualitative nature and its general objective is to interpret the context of families whose children did not participate either in classes or in the activities of the remote teaching system, therefore, this study is an analysis of school dropout. We studied the cases of four families, carrying out eight semi-structured interviews: one with the student and one with one of their legal guardians, who were heard separately. We observed that the habitus of the individuals of this research are similar, considering their social standing, low performance in school and the early insertion in the job market, as well as the approximation in terms of morals and preferences. Thus, the interviewees share a common relationship structure, a similar representation of schooling, social aspirations and also, difficulties, that is, a comparable future. We concluded that the social origin (the habitus), the lack of cultural capital in order to help the children in the endeavor of the remote classes, the greater appreciation of work to the detriment of studies, the individual accountability for the children's future, along with the lack of public policies that seek to extinguish disparities resulting from social origin were the determinants of school dropout that were identified through the interviews.