School and Identity: An educational challenge for social cohesion

Abstract

The present research, that took place in Chile, refers to children’s citizenship experience in the realm of school, through the configuration of ‘the common’ as a social cohesion platform. The methodological design is a case study in eight primary level educational centres. The data analysis from observation, interviews, and documents, results in three main categories: the first is the “alterity” (otherness) with the subcategories submission/domination, gender discrimination and aesthetics. The second large category is ‘the common”,  related to the discursive lines of ownership, participation, democracy, sociability and normative control. And the last is ‘identity’ related to social prestige, and autonomy versus dependency. The students build  different prestige’s identities according to social class. The identities match with a normative stereotype modelled by the adult, as control mechanisms to maintain  order in school from the ‘established power’. This control impacts  the ideological, ethical and political  horizon of the children’s symbolic representations, that are experienced by them as the lack of citizenship in the primary school.