Students and teacher near the source of a river: it may not seem like it, but this is the scenario of a math class. It is there that the educator explains concepts of geometry, such as area and radius of a circle.
But not only. He also proposes some reflections to students on environmental preservation and the effects that human actions have on nature.
The teaching method may seem strange at first. After all, math classes often contain operations on the blackboard, calculations of geometric figures and difficult formulas. For MarcÃlio Leão, 51, however, it is not quite like that.
The situation described at the beginning of the text is an example that Leão addresses in his doctoral thesis on how the teaching of mathematics can have a character aimed at the dissemination of values ​​contrary to violence.
“I had the idea of ​​doing this work aimed at a better society. Through education, especially mathematics education, we can achieve a society in which we don’t have so many pains. That became my life goal.”
A resident of São José do Rio Pardo, in the interior of São Paulo, Leão has been a military police officer for 22 years and is still in the corporation working in the environmental area.
As far as academic life is concerned, he graduated in mathematics at the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters in São José do Rio Pardo (SP) and, in 2022, delivered his doctoral test in mathematics education at Unesp (Universidade Estadual Paulista).
From the beginning of his academic career, he says, he was convinced that he would like to study the relationship between violence and mathematics. “I started to get interested in the issue of violence precisely because I was close to these pains and difficulties as a police officer.”
In his doctorate, Leão researched precisely how the teaching of mathematics can help to build a more just and peaceful world.
For this, says Leão, the educator can, for example, work with graphic students who address the rates of violence. Thus, in addition to explaining concepts of mathematics and statistics, the educator will be able to discuss this phenomenon that deeply affects Brazil, with contributions from the class.
The study carried out by the policeman involved a questionnaire applied in two public schools in the state of São Paulo and in a Fundação Casa. The questions tried to understand how young people saw the initiative of an education that dealt with themes that involved violence in the midst of math classes.
“[Uma das perguntas] it was if you [o aluno] thinks that it would be important for the mathematics teacher to discuss issues of violence in the classroom. Most young people from the three institutions responded that the teacher should discuss these issues at least sometimes in the classroom.”
The researcher also tried to understand the teacher’s side and interviewed two of them to hear what they thought about the way of teaching the subject from a more human perspective. The activity of educating has also been experienced by Leão in some situations, such as when he proposed to teach classes to fellow police officers.
The concern to develop research involving the theme of violence was motivated, in addition to the police work that Leão performs, by recent personal experiences. Based on the losses he has faced in recent years, says Leão, he has sought to delve deeper into a subject that can contribute to building a better society.
The first of these difficulties came in the second year of the Master’s, when his father died, after having a massive heart attack. The policeman, still in mourning, finished his graduate degree.
He then spent a period away from the academy and, in 2014, he experienced another tragedy – the suicide of his 19-year-old son.
“With the death of my son, I unfortunately had to interrupt this whole journey [acadêmico]. It was of extreme magnitude, because I found him in his last moments of life,” he reports.
Leão only returned to the university in 2017, with his doctorate. And during his research, he experienced a third adversity: in 2020, Ubiratan D’Ambrosio, his advisor, also died.
Now the military police officer hopes that his study will have a positive impact on the construction of mathematics curricula. “There are countless situations in life in which we can work in the classroom, the behavior and development of students’ awareness. These issues favor the formation of values”, he says.​
