It was the beginning of a new school year and the group of 13 and 14-year-olds listened with a mixture of surprise and curiosity as the sergeant told them that the rules have changed.
From now on, it is military discipline all the way, Sergeant Nunes told them.
They were to enter into classrooms in single file — hair short for the boys, a bun for the girls, he said.
Photo: AFP
Their school, the CED 07 educational center on the outskirts of Brasilia, is one of four public schools —with 7,000 students in all — that are being transformed into military-run schools.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a former paratrooper, promised to establish more of these state-run military secondary schools during his election campaign last year.
By the end of the year, there should be about 40 new military schools, said Mauro Oliveira, a spokesman for the Brazilian Federal District’s education secretariat.
“We are here to empower the teachers,” Captain Newton Araujo, a military police officer in impeccable blue uniform, said as he watched his subordinates instruct the pupils in the new school regime.
“We are here as collaborators, not usurpers,” he said, using distinctly military jargon.
Military police have been put in charge of discipline and administrative functions, while lessons are given by civilian teachers.
Nunes told a boy how short his hair must be cut with electric trimmers to comply with the new rules.
“Setting two for the sides, four for the back,” he said.
Over the coming months, the students are to make other changes. They are to wear uniforms, with girls permitted only “very moderate” accessories. They are stand each day for the national anthem. They are to receive civics classes.
“Through the principles of military culture we are going to apply rules of civility, patriotism, citizenship, ethics,” Newton said.
Lucas Monteiro, a 13-year-old student, said that he hoped that the discipline would reduce “physical and verbal aggression between the pupils, such as beatings and bullying.”
The schools were chosen for the pilot program in part because they are in poor, high-crime districts, Newton said.
They are not the first of their kind in Brazil. There are 120 other state schools that have been operating along military lines for years, half of them in Goias State, near the capital.
Bolsonaro during his campaign said that he wanted that model replicated on a much larger scale as they are a proven success in inculcating law-abiding values in students.
Pupil behavior improves under the strict rules of conduct and so do academic scores, Newton said.
However, the initiative has divided educators.
“I am extremely worried when our disciplinary director says that people who do not adapt to this model can leave,” teacher Carla Alcantara Souza said. “For an educator, to hear that ‘if you don’t fall in line, you can go,’ it’s painful.”
She also said she fears that students’ sense of identity would be warped by the experience.
“We are going up to a student with an enormous black afro hairstyle, accepted up to now, and telling him: ‘Unfortunately from now on you have to fit into this model in which your personality is no longer accepted,’” she said.
Some students also expressed concerns.
“I’m afraid because this will affect our freedom of expression,” said Maria Eduarda Lacerda, 14, adding that she had been told that she can no longer keep her hair short, nor dress as she wishes.
Newton said that his military police were not taking over entirely.
“A lot of people say the military police are going to take the place of the teachers, take over decisionmaking powers. The truth is totally the opposite. We want to empower them,” he said.
Brazilian Minister of Education Ricardo Velez Rodriguez has promised to create a special department handling just military schools.
“Today the planets are aligning in that way ... I have no doubt at all that it’s tipping toward an expansion of this kind of school,” Alves said.
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