The asymmetric relationship between families and the public school

Abstract

The incentive to the relationship between families and public school is a target of public politics, seen as something essential for an efficient learning. This research purpose was to investigate parents' experiences vis-à-vis their relationship with the school where their children study. The participants were school members and 22 students tutors attending the 3rd and 4th grades of elementary school. At first was done a participative observation within the school environment, after semi-structured interviews with the children tutors in their homes, focusing three aspects: the school, the teacher and the school education. The families' backgrounds were carefully taken into consideration, and parents showed different postures towards their relationships with their children schools. A traditional analytical approach was adopted to the data collected. As a result, this relationship was proved to be asymmetric, which seems to contribute to the maintenance of mechanisms of exclusion from public school over part of the underprivileged families.