Silenced bodies and school

Corpos silenciados e escola

Cuerpos silenciados y escuela

Jordania Lima Balbino

Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, RN, Brazil

jordaniabalbino@gmail.com

Tadeu João Ribeiro Baptista

Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, RN, Brazil

tadeujrbaptista@yahoo.com.br

Received: March 12, 2024

Approved: March 18, 2024

Published: March 26, 2025

ABSTRACT

Throughout school life, there is a noticeable process of silencing bodies in this educational environment. Thus, the central objective of this text is to analyze how the silencing of bodies at school has been thought of in theses and dissertations. The text was written on the basis of an exploratory bibliographic survey carried out in the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations on the subject of the silencing of bodies in the school environment, considering the title, abstract and keywords of these works, regardless of the research area. To be included, the text had to match all three search keywords: bodies, silencing and school. The data were analyzed using the theoretical basis of dialectical historical materialism. Through this research, it was possible to see that there is a vast bibliography on the themes indicated, but few that jointly include the body silenced at school. In this sense, this survey provokes us to write and reflect on the theme of silenced bodies in the school environment.

Keywords: Silencing; Bodies; School.

RESUMO

Ao longo da vida escolar, é perceptível um processo de silenciamento dos corpos nesse ambiente educacional. Assim, este texto apresenta como problema: como se tem pensado o silenciamento dos corpos na escola em teses e dissertações? O objetivo central deste estudo é analisar como se tem refletido o silenciamento corporal na escola em teses e dissertações. A escrita foi feita a partir de um levantamento bibliográfico realizado de forma exploratória na Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertações, acerca da temática do silenciamento dos corpos no ambiente escolar, considerando o título, o resumo e as palavras-chave dessas produções, independente da área de pesquisa. Para o texto ser incluído, era necessário que correspondesse às três palavras-chave de busca: corpos, silenciamento e escola. A análise dos dados foi feita a partir do embasamento teórico no materialismo histórico-dialético. Por meio desta pesquisa, foi possível perceber que existe uma vasta bibliografia acerca das temáticas indicadas, entretanto, poucas que incluam, de forma conjunta, o silenciamento do corpo na escola. Nesse sentido, este levantamento nos provoca a escrita e reflexão sobre a temática dos corpos silenciados no ambiente escolar.

Palavras-chave: Silenciamentos; Corpos; Escola.

RESUMEN

A lo largo de la vida escolar, se observa un proceso de silenciamiento de los cuerpos en este ambiente educativo. El objetivo central de este texto es, por lo tanto, analizar cómo el silenciamiento de los cuerpos en la escuela ha sido pensado en tesis y disertaciones. El escrito se basó en un relevamiento bibliográfico exploratorio realizado en la Biblioteca Digital Brasileña de Tesis y Disertaciones sobre el tema del silenciamiento de los cuerpos en el ámbito escolar, considerando el título, el resumen y las palabras clave de estas producciones, independientemente del ámbito de investigación. Para que el texto fuera incluido, debía corresponder a las tres palabras clave de la búsqueda: cuerpos, silenciamiento y escuela. Los datos se analizaron utilizando la base teórica del materialismo histórico dialéctico. A través de esta pesquisa, fue posible constatar que existe una vasta bibliografía sobre los temas indicados, pero pocas que incluyan conjuntamente el silenciamiento del cuerpo en la escuela. En este sentido, esta pesquisa nos provoca a escribir y reflexionar sobre el tema de los cuerpos silenciados en el ambiente escolar.

Palabras clave: Silenciamiento; Cuerpos; Escuela.

Introduction

When we think about the school environment, we must take into account what is stated in the Law on Brazilian Education Guidelines and Bases (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional - LDBEN), which encompasses all educational levels, from early childhood education to higher education, also considering the various modalities within these levels. Reflecting on this, we arrive at the realization that we spend most of our lives, especially during childhood, adolescence, and the early stages of adulthood, within institutions dedicated to formal education. This highlights how significantly this environment can influence the formation and constitution of individuals, especially those who manage to complete all the stages of schooling, despite the considerable inequality in access to and permanence in educational institutions.

Given that we form and are constituted by the society around us, we arrive at the perception, as affirmed by Marx in numerous writings (Marx, 2008; 2010; 2011), that we are embedded in a system of social organization of production — capitalism. And even if we are often alienated from our reality, since we are formed through and based on the logic of this societal model, small spaces of resistance are still possible, should our understanding of society become concrete (Marx, 2008).

To better understand what we intend to demonstrate, when looking at the tension established in the class struggle between the owners of the means of production and the proletariat, in light of the ideological hegemony of the former over the latter (Marx; Engels, 2023), the pursuit of behaviors deemed appropriate, especially among workers (such as discipline and the absence of questioning), becomes essential to the process of reproducing capitalism as a mode of production. After all, a critically aware working class does not serve the interests of the bourgeoisie, the holders of the means of production.

We provisionally understand the process of silencing bodies as related to the process of discipline. One author who deeply explored this topic was Foucault, particularly in his discussions on the forms of control exerted through sexuality, imprisonment, schooling, and other mechanisms (Foucault 1999, 2002). His research also informed other studies on the silenced and disciplined body (Miguez; Furley; Pinel, 2022; Xavier; Müller Junior, 2020).

Although Foucault is a prolific author, we understand that it is possible to engage with a different theoretical framework on this topic, one more closely aligned with dialectical materialism, as a way of establishing new discussions and debates. Authors within this epistemological paradigm also engage with a different ontological perspective. In our analysis, silence is understood as a form of discipline.

Thinking about silence in the classroom does not necessarily mean focusing only on oral communication, but rather on all possible bodily expressions, whether through the absence of speech or the restlessness of children in class. The body is understood here following Baptista (2013), as ontologically constituted by and for labor, not only within this societal model but also in others. This means conceiving of these bodies, as previously mentioned, within a given social configuration — namely, the capitalist socioeconomic organization in which we currently live.

The idea of discipline and the organization of knowledge in schools takes shape through various models that structure the content and processes, such as the liberal methodologies identified by Libâneo (2013), including the technicist trend, which emphasizes teaching procedures and technologies based on human capital theory and is predominantly concerned with preparing students for the labor market. These liberal trends are somewhat equivalent to the non-critical models identified by Saviani (2012), who also highlights the presence of technicist tendencies.

Beyond the non-critical educational trends, Saviani (2012) comments on perspectives he calls critical-reproductive. Among these, he highlights the model of symbolic violence, the dualist school theory, and the theory of the Ideological State Apparatuses. According to Saviani, these critical reflections on schooling expose its problems and the class-based interests embedded within it, but they do not go beyond critique. Two of these theories stand out for brief analysis.

The first is the dualist school theory, developed in France in the 1970s by Baudelot and Establet, which argues that “[...] the school, despite its unitary and unifying appearance, is a school divided into two (and no more than two) large networks, which correspond to the division of capitalist society into two fundamental classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat” (Saviani, 2012, p. 24).[1] This model shows how these networks prepare children according to their social class, reinforcing capitalist reproduction.

The other theory is proposed by Althusser with the so-called Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs). In this case, according to Althusser himself (2022), capitalism demands a certain need to reproduce its conditions, and, in this sense, there are two central apparatuses, namely: a) the Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs) and; b) the ISA.

Among the RSAs, there are the structures of repression by physical force or not due to political conditions and the armed forces (Navy, Army, Air Force and Police), which comply with administrative orders and prohibitions, explicit or implicit censorship (Althusser, 2022, p. 81). While the ISAs are composed of the religious, family, legal, political, union, information Ideological Apparatuses (such as the media, culture and school) (Althusser, 2022, p. 74-75).

In this framework, the ISAs, especially the school, are responsible for indirectly and subtly constructing the ideology of the dominant class. As Marx and Engels (2023) put it, ideology is nothing more than the set of prevailing ideas of the ruling classes, namely, the bourgeoisie.

Although these views on the social function of schools have been the subject of considerable critique, it is undeniable that educational institutions bear an internal contradiction. On the one hand, it is up to it to collaborate in the education of people, contributing to an omnilateral education through a creative and unitary school (Gramsci, 2022), in contrast to the model of a dualistic school that is detrimental to the working class (Saviani, 2012).

One final aspect remains to be considered: why address the issue of the silenced body? Why emphasize the body at all? Vigarello (apud Soares, 2005, p. 17) provides the answer:

The body is the first place where the adult's hand marks the child, it is the first space where the social and psychological limits that were given to their behavior are imposed, it is the emblem where culture comes to inscribe its signs as well as its coats of arms.

In addition to the body being the locus where the adult inscribes social and psychological boundaries, the rules, according to Daolio (2005), must be “em-bodied” (“in-corpo-radas”). This expression is meaningful, since, from a semantic point of view, the rules must be “placed within the body.” From early childhood, children are “institutionalized” to internalize social rules embedded in our societal model, rules often linked to the dynamics we discussed earlier regarding the relationship between the holders of the means of production and the working class.

One might think, in layman’s terms, that these economic questions do not directly influence school conceptions, especially from the students’ perspective. However, as Saviani (2012) and Libâneo (2013) show, educational conceptions and teaching methodologies are directly tied to the social understanding of individuals. In other words, if individuals are viewed as belonging to the working class, critical formation becomes undesirable, and emphasis is instead placed on the disciplining of these bodies.

Based on the reflections presented so far, in addition to understanding, empirically, from informal conversations with professionals from educational institutions in which a predominance of an environment of silence was verified amidst questioning and critical reflections in the classrooms, this study has the following problem: how has the silencing of bodies in schools been thought about in theses and dissertations? And the central objective is to analyze how the silencing of the body in schools has been reflected in theses and dissertations.

Methodology

This research adopts historical-dialectical materialism as its guiding paradigm, as it allows for the mapping of findings through a contextual and dialectical interpretation that reveals the totalities of production and the evident need for further studies addressing the proposed theme. It advances from the abstract to the concrete and identifies the essence of the material (Marx, 2008).

This study is characterized as exploratory in nature (Gil, 2008). According to the author:

Exploratory research is developed with the aim of providing a general overview, of approximate nature, regarding a certain fact. This type of research is especially conducted when the chosen topic is little explored, making it difficult to formulate precise and operationalizable hypotheses (Gil, 2008, p. 27).[2]

To carry out this exploratory study, we used a bibliographic research model through the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertações — BDTD), as this is the most significant portal for conducting this type of survey. Returning to the methodological aspect, this research employs a qualitative approach. As Triviños (1987) affirms, the characterization of this type of research is very broad and defined by various particularities. For this reason, we limit ourselves here to stating that “[...] qualitative research, in very general terms, follows the same route when conducting an investigation. That is, a topic or problem is chosen, and data is collected and analyzed” (Triviños, 1987, p. 131).[3]

From this perspective, we understand exploratory research as being attentive to the inclusion and exclusion criteria of selected works. We used an integrative literature review model, following the PRISMA model (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis) proposed by Moher et al. (2009).

This research was conducted in October 2023. Initially, we found 170 results — 115 dissertations and 55 theses. After refining the search to include only recent works from the last five years (2018–2023), we found 96 results: 62 dissertations and 34 theses. Finally, after analyzing the abstracts and some excerpts from the dissertations and theses, only seven studies remained, which will be detailed below.

To arrive at the seven studies included in the final analysis, we applied the following inclusion criteria, regardless of the field of research:

1. Including the keywords: body, silencing, and school;

2. Being written between 2018 and 2023.

The exclusion criteria were:

A. Not including the three keywords defined as the core of the research together (body, silencing, and school);

B. Not being written in the last five years.

Based on this model, we created Figure 1:

Figure 1: Data selected according to the PRISMA model.

Source: Authors' elaboration.

To analyze the data, we used thematic analysis as proposed by Minayo (2014). For the author, “[...] thematic analysis consists of discovering the meaning cores that compose a communication, whose presence or frequency signifies something relevant to the analytical object in question” (Minayo, 2014, p. 316).[4] This methodology consists of three stages: Pre-analysis, Material Exploration, and, finally, Treatment of Results and Interpretation (Minayo, 2014).

Results and Discussion: On Silencing in the Literature

Upon completing our exploratory data collection, we identified some noteworthy findings. Although this research is qualitative in nature, a quantitative lens shows that, after applying the exclusion criteria and considering dissertations and theses defended between 2018 and 2023, we initially found 96 works: 62 dissertations and 34 theses. From there, we identified the theses and dissertations that aligned with our research focus.

Texts that discussed the silencing of teachers rather than children were excluded, as were those that did not address all three key terms: silencing, bodies, and school. A total of 88 works were excluded, including one duplicated dissertation at the platform, leaving only seven studies: two theses and five dissertations.

In each of these works, one of the key terms emerged more emphatically: four focused on bodies (three dissertations and one thesis), two on gender and sexuality (one dissertation and one thesis), and one on language (one dissertation), excluding direct discussions on the term “silencing.”

From this data, we constructed Table 1.

Table 1 – List of Identified and Analyzed Works

No.	Author		Title	Higher Education Institution		Type of Work		Year of Defense
1	Alves, Gieri Toledo		Relações étnicos raciais, ensino e afrocentricidade: corpo-identidade de meninos negros (Ethnic-Racial Relations, Education and Afrocentricity: Body-Identity of Black Boys)	Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC)		Dissertation		2021
2	Aquilino, Simone Martins		Entre jovens invisíveis e corpos silenciados: manifestações das sexualidades e a homofobia (des)veladas nas aulas de educação física (Between Invisible Youth and Silenced Bodies: Manifestations of Sexualities and (Un)veiled Homophobia in Physical Education Classes)	Universidade de Brasília (UnB)		Dissertation		2020
3	Carvalho, Marília Alves de	(Não) façam silêncio: ensino de arte e o direito à palavra de meninas e mulheres na escola pública ((Do Not) Remain Silent: Art Education and the Right to Speak for Girls and Women in Public School)			Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP)		Dissertation		2020
4	Pinho, Camila Maria Santos de	Juventude, teatro e educação: um olhar a partir da afroperspectiva (Youth, Theater and Education: A View from the Afroperspective)			Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso (UFMT)		Dissertation		2020
5	Santos, José Carlos dos	A corporeidade criança vai à escola? (Does the Child’s Corporality Go to School?)			Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso (UFMT)		Dissertation		2019
6	Costa, Rosilene Silva Santos da	Relações étnico-raciais na educação infantil: contribuições da teoria das representações sociais (Ethnic-Racial Relations in Early Childhood Education: Contributions of the Theory of Social Representations)			Universidsde Federal de Paraíba (UFPB)		Thesis		2019
7	Nascimento, Ana Paula Leite	Juventudes em cena no cotidiano escolar: movimentos de (re)produção de silenciamentos, regulações de gênero, subversões e resistências (Youth on Stage in Everyday School Life: Movements of (Re)Production of Silencing, Gender Regulations, Subversions and Resistances)			Universidsde Federal de Sergipe (UFS)		Thesis		2019

Source: Authors’ elaboration

From the analysis of each thesis and dissertation, we identified three central themes (categories or meaning cores) as per Minayo (2014):

1. The Body;

2. Gender and Sexuality;

3. Language.

From the perspective of the body, the three dissertations that address the body are the works of Alves (2021), Pinho (2020), and Santos (2019). In addition to these studies, we also identified the doctoral thesis of Costa (2019).

Speaking about the body, the dissertation by Alves (2021) reflects on the bodies of Black children and the need to address this throughout the school year and in all subjects, since it is a matter of identity formation, as stated in the following excerpt: “However, the Eurocentric school soon teaches a ‘normal’ Black child that their place is to serve, to be docile, a loser, dumb, evil, ugly, ridiculed, and of lesser value than white people” (Alves, 2021, p. 15).[5] From this perspective, the work criticizes a generalist approach to the Black body, which should be considered an African identity issue. Thus, the conceptualization of the body is based on an identity perspective, and the condition of silence is presented in the work as something that must be broken. In other words, there is a need to annul the silence around this issue, especially within the school, understood here according to Saviani (2012), regarding the existence of a dualist school that presents disadvantages for the social constitution of individuals.

Santos (2019), in turn, addresses how children move within specific schools — whether with freedom or if they are silenced, both in the classroom and in Physical Education classes. The author approaches the body from a phenomenological perspective and discusses, based on concerns raised during their supervised internships, how teachers or the school discipline children, forbidding them free movement and treating them as mini adults. This conception of school is positioned critically against this educational model. Santos (2019) uses the term “silence” in the sense of the non-permission for children's free expressivity: “[...] there are countless attempts to silence this uniqueness of the child and of childhood within some schools which, through standards, norms, and rules, end up abbreviating the meaning of being free and playful” (p. 17).[6]

Pinho (2020) addresses the bodies of Black youth and how they are considered in the theater environment, that is, theater in all spaces that experience an educational process. We understand that the work addresses the concept of “pluriversal education,” and our understanding of this concept is of an education that experiences multiple epistemologies that enable the formation of youth, as emphasized in the following excerpt: “The Afroperspective sustains the concept of pluriversal education and guides the search for other epistemologies that contemplate the formation of these youth” (Pinho, 2020, p. 18).[7] The relationship with the body emerges as a matter of identity and of recognition of how Black youth perceive and relate to their bodies. The aspect of silence arises precisely from the annulment by school institutions of different Black bodies, which undermines how these youth perceive and understand themselves as Black bodies.

Costa (2019) addresses antiracism — or rather, the lack of such a practice within schools, especially in relation to the bodies of Black children. The author argues that there is an invisibility of this theme in educational practice. From this perspective, the school appears as a place that invalidates the history and body of the Black child, propagating racist stereotypes. Her discussion primarily addresses how to make this topic a part of everyday dialogue within schools.

On the topic of gender and sexuality, we have the dissertation by Aquilino (2020) and the thesis by Nascimento (2019). In Aquilino’s (2020) study, the author seeks to address and propose ways to prevent homophobia in Physical Education classes in the municipality of Extremoz/RN. Early in the work, she presents the concept of “bodily culture,” helping us understand that she views Physical Education from a critical perspective. In this sense, the concept of the body also assumes this role of being inserted into a specific society, such that critical thinking is necessary to understand it. Similarly, the understanding of education is aligned with a critical perspective as an instrument of social change. The term “silence” in this research is evident in the lack of discussion about gender issues within the school.

Nascimento’s (2019) doctoral thesis, in turn, discusses the reproduction of silencing and invisibility of youth bodies within a federal secondary education institution, as well as the resistance in the face of this scenario of control, grounding the research in historical-dialectical materialism. In seeking to understand the concept of school in the thesis, we observe that this formal educational institution is presented as a place that does not allow youth “to be young.” In other words, their expressiveness, socially constructed, does not fit the profile of what is understood as a school subject. This is evident in the following: “[...] the limits and barriers that persist in the school space do not allow youth demands to be heard, insofar as the value they carry is underestimated” (Nascimento, 2019, p.18).[8] Regarding the term “body,” it arises in the questioning of whether what is occurring is the formation of “docile bodies,” understood by us as bodies shaped by conventional social norms. In this regard, silence is also understood as the annulment of youth individuality.

In our understanding, the relationship between school and youth should not primarily function as the creation of mechanisms of constraint through sermons and discourses, as disciplinary school practices, sustained by moral principles, which, if not guiding youth behavior, will result in moral failures and punishments expressed in disciplinary school practices that silence, inhibit, and render invisible the diversities of youth cultures, identities, individualities, and subjectivities. The discourses in school practices that justify some institutionalized stances which repress are guided by a disciplining dimension, where certain disciplinary processes to which youth are subjected are supported by moral, religious, medical, and biological discourses that do not engage with youth diversity (Nascimento, 2019, p. 22).[9]

In other words, the individuality, characteristics, and very subjectivities of young people are not considered, and in this way, silence is understood as the annulment of what it means to be young, based on popular conceptions of a lively, autonomous, and confident individual.

Regarding the theme of language, we have the dissertation by Carvalho (2020). This author discusses the silencing implicitly provoked by the school through visual strategies that emphasize this behavior. Critically, it is pointed out:

Through control, violence, and discipline, the cold and hostile architecture teaches negation, obedience, order, and subordination — well rewarded by a system of grades, evaluation, and merit. The containment of bodies, which from the age of six stop playing and begin learning to “behave” and follow pre-established rules, is quickly incorporated and assimilated by most students. Those who do not fit into this prison-like logic or adapt easily to it are soon labeled as “problem students” and, if possible, diagnosed and medicated. There are many ready-made responses for these cases: “Do you think you have a will of your own?”, “I’m the one in charge here!”, “Here, you listen and stay quiet!” (Carvalho, 2020, p. 20).[10]

In this excerpt, the dissertation very clearly presents its conception of the body, understanding it in an integral way, and silence is expressed through the control of these bodies in schools, acting as bodily silencers and normalizers.

We understand, based on the analyzed works, that silencing, beyond the perspective of oral speech, also concerns the body expressed through bodily language. In other words, children and young people are silenced from the moment they are not allowed to present themselves as they are, cannot express themselves or exercise critical thinking in any situation. We infer this by understanding that silence, as treated in the reviewed works, can revolve around various themes such as sexuality, art, ethnic-racial relations, among others.

We link this perspective of silencing to what Marx (2017) discusses about productive force: “[...] by changing the mode of production, the way of earning a living, they change all their social relations” (p. 102). That is, we are in a context guided by the capitalist mode of production, and within the Brazilian context of 2025, we are experiencing the partial implementation of the “New High School,” in which schooling is glaringly oriented toward technical education, diverging from the perspective presented by Gramsci (2022) of a creative and unitary school, which should be aimed at an omnilateral development. On the contrary, it reaffirms, as the Italian author himself states, a traditional school, with the goal of maximizing bourgeois profit. Thinking about the current technical education approach in Brazil, albeit from a very superficial interpretive standpoint, the indication is that we do not need adolescents capable of critical thinking, but students who understand the appropriate techniques and procedures for the job market.

From this point of view, we find ourselves deeply linked to what we understand as the technicist pedagogical conception: “[...] technicist pedagogy advocates the reorganization of the educational process in such a way as to make it objective and operational” (Saviani, 2013, p.381).[11] In this sense, this conception of silencing becomes very useful for an objective education that promotes memorization in order to operationalize work in industry, agriculture, or other precarious labor models, which are very present in activities related to digital platforms such as Uber^® and IFood^®. The way education is approached in this silencing context appears to direct adolescents as if they did not need to reflect on what they are doing and how their living conditions are, but only to listen to what they are told and perform the task assigned to them.

When we consider this understanding of not reflecting on one’s actions, we observe the dismantling of the construction of subjectivity by individuals, understanding that “[...] the subjectivity of the individual implies materializing their bodily constitution and, consequently, the way in which this body of consciousness manifests and moves within the relations among men” (Baptista, 2013, p. 77).[12]

In this sense, individuals act in an alienated way and, in the extreme, reified, as Lukács (2003) would say, because they do not have true awareness of what they do nor are they situated within the relations of production as thinking individuals, but only as machines or appendages that perform an activity disconnectedly. This brings us back to the discussion of the means of production holders and the working class. Within this capitalist context, the school continues to educate children and adolescents in a way that encourages a singular view of society, with no awareness of the social duality in which we live.

Final Considerations

Considering the body as the material/spiritual expression of the human being in its relationship with nature/culture (Baptista, 2019), and recognizing that ontological formation tends to occur in different spaces, including formal educational institutions, this text poses the following problem: how has the silencing of bodies in school been conceptualized in theses and dissertations? The central objective was to analyze how bodily silencing in schools has been addressed in theses and dissertations.

The works reviewed emphasize the need for research that treats the themes of silencing, body, and school in an integrated manner and within a general context, given that the texts examined only present specific cases in more restricted areas. The analysis of these texts allowed us to perceive that there is a large, alienated mass in the face of the problems surrounding the theme of bodies in schools and a coherent understanding related to the topic.

We analyzed several works that address the theme of silencing, but always as a consequence of some aspect of invisibility, and never as a problem to be analyzed in and of itself. That is, the body, the school space, and gender are discussed, but not the environment of silencing of these bodies, since the silent bodies of children are not being considered, nor the reasons for this, or how it has occurred. In other words, when silence is addressed, the body is not approached in an integral manner, but rather through a specific aspect that is being silenced, such as gender; ethnicity/race, among others.

Among the works, we perceive a genuine concern regarding how the teaching process has been taking place in schools, perpetuating retrograde practices, such as prejudice in its various forms — for example, prejudice related to gender, sexual orientation, and nationality, to name a few — and structural racism, understood here as something organically embedded in the social structure (Almeida, 2019). Treating the school as a possible form of social domination is to understand its importance in the formative human constitution of subjects, considering that it is the environment where individuals spend most of the early years of their lives, as already mentioned due to legal obligation in Brazil, and also to reject the possibility of the school being a place of omnilateral formation for the working class.

The conclusion we reach in this article is that there are several gaps involving our three key terms: body, school, and silencing. More precisely, the gap lies in the interrelation of these themes, in how we can understand these terms jointly in order to improve both teaching and the reality of our educational environments, in light of other possible ways of constituting the body and, consequently, our society.

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