“Levados da breca”: the medicalization of children in school

Abstract

Childhood understood as a “modern invention”, is permeated by cultural processes that affect infant bodies in the most varied spaces where they are inserted. Therefore, a multiplicity of technical-scientific knowledge builds truths by organizing ways of understanding childhood. This research was conducted with education professionals in public schools in a southern Brazilian municipality, in order to understand how child referral processes occur to health specialists who are responsible for childhood-related disorders diagnosis and biomedical treatment. Interviews were carried out with education professionals, as well as observations and records in field diaries. Empirical material also included the documents used for diagnoses and referrals of students considered to have disorders. This set of materials was analyzed as cultural artifacts and subjected to thematic analysis. The diagnosis and preparation of reports proved to be a quick way to solve problems that demonstrate discomfort in school, such as agitation, lack of attention, and poor school performance, turning unwanted behaviors into pathologies. The issue at stake is not making a value judgment about the phenomenon investigated, but rethinking how medicalization practices spread within and outside schools and what effects they generate on the construction of subjects and communities, often covering up larger social, cultural, and economic problems.