The meaning and practice of school rituals in contexts of poverty. An approach to the problem in an urban-peripheral school in the city of San Luis

Abstract

In this paper we report the results of a field research in the primary level of an urban-peripheral school in the city of San Luis, attended by children and youngsters coming from poor sectors. Our objective was to describe the school rituals of entering and leaving school and the raising of the flag, and to analyze the subjective configurations of these practices in the particular context of the school. The information was collected through observations of these rituals and interviews aimed at investigating the meanings that students construct about them. Within this framework, we carried out a qualitative treatment of the information through the construction and analysis of emerging categories that allowed us to unravel senses and meanings associated with particular school practices. When analyzing these school rituals, we observed that they constitute milestones on which a representation of the institution’s “we” is built, opening the possibility of multiple resignifications, in the light of the current and daily problems that cross the subjectivity of children and young people attending school.