SCHOOL AND SOCIAL CLASSES FROM A GRAMSCIAN PERSPECTVE: THE CLASSROOM, THE INTELLECTUALS AND THE SIMPLE PEOPLE

The present article is a partial result of the post-doctoral study developed in 2011-2012, as a visiting fellow at the Universita degli Studi di Torino, under the supervision of Professor Angelo D'Orsi and supported by FAPESP. It aims to discuss, from a gramscian perspective, the role of the school in overcoming the society of classes, situating this author in the context of pedagogical theories that investigate this theme. Firstly, two pre-incarceration gramscian texts from 1919, which deal specifically with the school theme, are analysed: an article published in Avanti!, titled "Is the school a serious institution?", and an untitled chronicle published in the L'Ordine Nuovo. Next, considerations derived from this analysis are articulated with some concepts and positions from the author, expressed in the Prison Notebooks, such as "base and superstructure", "integral Estate", "political society", "civil society", "rational", "war of movement" and "war of position". Finally, it is concluded that, for Gramsci, as an element of the civil society, the school is, in fact, a tool of the hegemony of the dominant class, but also, contradictorily, the field for the counter-hegemonic fight, combated as a "war of position" by the intellectuals that have in it their specific acting domain: the teachers. Furthermore, by its characteristics, it constitutes a privileged space for the contact between the intellectuals and the "simple people" and, therefore, an important tool for the cultural elevation of the masses, from which the intellectuals committed to the subaltern classes should not abdicate.