This article has as its central objective the investigation of the connections and contrasts between the violence found at schools and that observed in the neighborhoods of origin of the school's population. Facts characterizing the reality of the school were identified, as well as the representations made of the violence. The study followed a qualitative approach that made use of the method of case studies. Data were collected in interviews and in observations of relationships at school. The choice of a school attended to socioeconomic criteria of the resident population, to the situation of violence in the school surroundings, and to the violence within the school itself. The results indicate that manifestations of violence typical of the outside reality are penetrating the school, and also the way in which such representations interfere in the conduct of education workers and agents. These representations can be related to two moments. The first when reports of intense violence raise feelings of fear and insecurity among the school players, hampering or even precluding the action of education; and the second moment, starting with the arrival of a new school principal, when attempts are made to reverse the situation via the adoption of a rigid discipline. The effects of this latter change reveal, on the one hand, perceptions as to the reduction of violence associated to the external reality, specifically as related to drug traffic within the school, and, on the other hand, they show the production of an institutional violence that excludes those resistant to the new order of things.
Violence; School institution; Youngsters; Sociability