Chapter 1: School hierarchies, bullying and prejudice: a conceptual discussion Summary: The aim of this chapter is to discuss the concepts of bullying, prejudice and school hierarchy based on studies by authors from the Critical Theory of Society, mainly Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse. These authors did not directly study bullying, but the violence raised by the fascism of the twentieth century. Adorno discusses educational phenomena associated with violence and its combat. He exposes the existence of dual school hierarchy and how this is associated with violence itself and social discrimination. Based on these authors, the chapter will also discuss the concepts of autonomy and authoritarianism. This discussion is associated with a recent research on bullying and its relations with the popularity of students and school performance. This chapter will present the theoretical basis and review the literature on bullying as a basis for the proposed research and the analysis and discussion of results.
Chapter 2: Objectives and research method Summary: In this chapter, the objectives will be outlined based on the exposed discussion in the previous chapter. The methods to fulfill them will also be described, explaining the characteristics of the subjects, the scales of 'autonomy from the authority', 'school hierarchy', 'indication of colleagues' and 'bullying self indication', developed by Crochík, and the Fascism Scale developed by Adorno in his study of the authoritarian personality, together with other authors from the University of Berkeley. Chapter 3: Analysis and discussion of the survey data Summary: This chapter will present and discuss the results of the scales applied to 274 students in their final year of elementary school II. Initially, it will be presented the relationship between school performance, bullying and prejudice; later, data obtained from the relations between bullying, prejudice, adherence to the ideology of authoritarianism and autonomy from the authority of the teacher; finally, will be exposed the main characteristics of the authors of aggression and their victims, the reasons for aggression and feelings caused to their victims. Chapter 4: Proposals to prevent school violence Summary: In this chapter, we will summarize the main results of research and concepts exposed in the first chapter to propose ways to combat bullying at school and the existing prejudice.