Opinion – Michael França: Violence can kill the pretension of children to become good citizens

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We are a violent society. Brazil has one of the highest homicide rates in the world. In 2016, according to data from the World Bank, the 61,283 victims made this rate in the country about six times higher than that found in the United States and 29 times higher than that of the United Kingdom.

There are several negative consequences of criminality in our daily lives. Fear, restrictions on freedom, psychological trauma and, in cases of death, the pain of loss. However, the deaths represent not only an individual loss, but also a collective one.

In 2004, according to a study carried out by Daniel Cerqueira, Alexandre Carvalho, Waldir Lobão and Rute Rodrigues, the estimated cost of violence represented more than 5% of the national GDP (Analysis of the Costs and Consequences of Violence in Brazil, 2007).

The impact on children should not be overlooked either. Academic literature has documented effects on cognitive development, depression, anxiety, and magnification of aggressive behaviors.

Daily exposure to violence generates a feeling of insecurity and tends to have a negative influence on the school attendance of children who were born in low-income areas, thus leading to a decrease in learning and an increase in school dropout rates.

In the city of Rio de Janeiro, for example, Joana Monteiro and Rudi Rocha found that shootings between drug gangs in the favelas affected the performance of students in nearby schools (Drug Battles and School Achievement: Evidence from Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas, 2017).

In São Paulo, the scenario is no different. Using a dataset with the location of homicides, Lívia Menezes and Martin Koppensteiner showed that this type of death has considerable consequences for educational outcomes in the city of São Paulo (Violence and Human Capital Investments, 2021).

In this study, researchers found that in addition to its impact on human capital acquisition, violence also negatively affects boys’ aspirations. Additionally, they found that men are the most impacted in school performance and attendance.

This entire framework restricts the development of skills of low-income children and, consequently, ends up having important repercussions on the perpetuation of poverty.

Furthermore, in a country where part of society considers the favelas to be dominated by criminals, those who, as fate would have it, were born in environments that were not conducive to the development of a human being, still have to deal with social discrimination. Thus, they have a high chance of remaining in the same socioeconomic situation as their parents.

Without the necessary investments to break the poverty trap to which many children in the favelas are subjected, the context means that some are seduced by the world of crime. In such a way, they end up becoming what, in a way, part of society expects of them.

In this context, social exclusion and prejudice mean that many promising children from the periphery are unable to progress socially, becoming what, in the eyes of certain Brazilians, is currently conventionally defined as: “a good citizen”.

The text is a tribute to the song “My soul (the peace I don’t want)”, performed by the band O Rappa and composed by Alexandre Monte De Menezes, Lauro Jose De Farias, Marcelo De Campos Lobato, Marcelo Falcão Custodio and Marcelo Fontes Do Nascimento I saw Santana.

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