School Participation: A Grownup Game?

Abstract

Instead of producing citizens, neoliberal democracy generates consumers, and the resulting framework is an automated society of uncommitted individuals who feel absolutely discouraged and powerless on a social level. Reproducing or transforming that question is part of the contemporary school’s task, where school participation is seriously compromised. Beyond a simple theoretical concern, through the identification of the relationship between education and participation, the article — product of a qualitative research— looks to understand the ways, experiences, sense and meanings that school boys and girls have of such relationship. These children, who are from the third, fourth and fifth grade, come from three educational institutions from the Lasallista District in Bogotá. In this case, an attempt was made to analyze, based on Grounded Theory, the pedagogic practice known as school participation in the participation stories told by boys and girls as well as in their own awareness. In other words, the article makes it possible to speak in the present tense about the life experiences of children’s participation in four school contexts: school council elections, pedagogical practice inside the classroom, pastoral activity and, finally, the daily school life.