Ei-iE

After last week’s shooting at a school in Sao Paolo educators worldwide have shared their solidarity and grief with their colleagues, students and families in Brazil.

The Confederaçao Nacional dos Trabalhadores em Educaçao (CNTE), affiliated to Education International (EI), released a statement shortly after the bloody attack on the public school Escola Estadual Professor Raul Brasil ("Professor Raul Brasil State School") in the Brazilian municipality of Suzano, São Paulo State, earlier last week. Two shooters murdered five students and two educators, leaving the international education community in grief and shock.

The CNTE has expressed its “solidarity with educators, students and their families,” while making a call to reflect on “the violence that has emanated from the presidential campaign,” alluding to the pro-weapons statement of the then-candidate Jair Bolsonaro.

According to the union, the climate of violence has increased in the country since the presidential campaign, spilling over into school communities and directed particularly against unionised teachers. The CNTE also denounces the institutional hate speech against women, homosexuals and political opponents, and the new legislation of possession of weapons.

The union has called for more effective social policies to reduce social inequality and break the “vicious circle of violence” that is “not generated in schools but is a result of the tensions that permeate society and local communities”.

You can listen to a podcast by EI featuring Fatima da Silva, general secretary of CNTE, who describes the current political and social situation in Brazil by clicking here.