1 INTRODUCTION

This essay aims to reflect, from a psychosocial perspective, on the social challenges imposed and exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, with a view to the possibility of developing the Culture of Peace (CP) ²² in educational contexts, as well as, at the same time, pointing out possible reflective paths for expanding the aforementioned culture, in light of the psychosocial contribution of studies on social representations²³ started by Serge Moscovici.

Recognizing the complexity that lies in the aforementioned objective, this manuscript was structured into three complementary moments. Initially, the prerogatives that motivate meditation on CP articulated with the psychosocial prism in the context (^{Ben Alaya, 2020}) of the pandemic are presented. Subsequently, educational challenges exacerbated by Covid-19 are exposed; and, finally, possible paths are indicated that psychosocial studies on social representations can follow for the development of CP in a (post) pandemic reality.

2 CULTURE OF PEACE: A LOOK AT THE PANDEMIC SCENARIO

At the time we write - January 2023 - the global pandemic scenario records six million and eighty-three thousand deaths from Covid-19, of which six hundred and ninety-seven thousand deaths are Brazilian. Thus, even with a faster vaccination process, helping to reduce the number of deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) has not yet declared the end of the pandemic and maintained the global state of emergency (^{WHO, 2023}). With this in mind, we point out that the analyses that follow are partial and still unclear given the complexity and perplexity of a situation of this magnitude and the consequences of the heightened social phenomena produced by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Nevertheless, we believe it is pertinent to contribute to the reflection around PC in the context of the pandemic, relying on three complementary prerogatives - of a social, legal, and theoretical nature - necessary for the development of investigations that portray the current world scenario.

The first prerogative of a social nature is based on the understanding that Covid-19 was characterized by the WHO as one of the most dangerous and difficult to control pandemics in recent centuries. In addition to the shocks to collective health, the economy, and world politics, this pandemic has encouraged, as a social phenomenon, the worsening of historic social barriers to the development of peace²⁴.

As assessed by supranational bodies (^{ONU, 2020}; World ^{Bank, 2021}), specifically with regard to sociocultural impacts, it was found that the pandemic contributed to the worsening and sophistication of the constitution of a collective environment in which the logic of survival and the search for fundamental resources overrode the fragile and worn-out logic of solidarity and collective cooperation. It is noted that, although egolatry has always manifested itself as one of the harmful sociocultural elements that constitute the civilizing process (^{Elias, 1994}), currently, this trait has been accentuated, and the delicate ego-alter (other) relationship²⁵ has assumed a level of competition and competitiveness, in which the alter is represented and symbolically dressed as a social agent that disputes, rivals and battles with me/or my group in the avid search for scarce resources that have been administered unequally.

In the same way, for ^{Amnesty International (2021}), the social impacts generated by the pandemic, for the most part, focused on the violation of human (^{ONU, 1948}) and fundamental rights. For this organization, the pandemic both made the abysmal social inequalities transparent and exposed the silent vilification of access and fulfillment of the rights to health, education, housing, working conditions, social security and, above all, the right to life. Further nourishing what scholars (^{Souza, 2009}; ^{Chauí, 2013}) call the constitution of a perverse citizenship, in which there is the tacit configuration of first-class - privileged - and second-class - overlooked/subjected/peripheral citizens, precisely social minorities were the social segment that has had its fundamental and human rights stifled the most (^{Amnesty Internacional, 2021}). As ^{Chizzotti (2020}, p. 218) critically reinforces:

Such inequalities were naturalized by common sense and were treated as if they were normal. Unfair distribution of social and economic wealth, social discrimination of groups, lack of sanitation networks, uncontrolled burning of large forests cannot be seen as normal. [...]. The pandemic has changed daily activities, habits, ways of living and feeling, socializing and social interactions, interrupting work and projects in such a way that life will no longer be, in the future, what it once was before the epidemic outbreak. At least for our generations (Emphasis added).

In an illustrative way, strictly when paying attention to the Brazilian context, we found from the Global Peace Index Report, developed by the Institute for Economics & Peace (^{IEP, 2020}; ²⁰²¹), that the onset of the pandemic contributes to the deterioration of processes of pacification in our country. According to this report, in addition to there being a drastic reduction in democracy in Brazil, due to the reduction in freedom of thought and expression, the unmeasured use of public security forces, the State's debt and the dismantling of traditional acquired social rights, the pandemic boosted the increase in poverty and the difficulty in social mobility. The Galtunian irenist binomial (^{Galtung, 1985}) peace/ development²⁶ socially fair economics, therefore, was crumbling even more rapidly during the course of the pandemic in Brazil.

Furthermore, the aforementioned report (^{IEP, 2020}; ²⁰²¹) revealed that, of the 163 countries evaluated, Brazil, which in 2020 ranked 126th, in 2021, due to the social collapse caused mainly by the pandemic and due to the fragile State administration in coordinating this situation, it came to occupy the 128th position, that is, Brazil was behind countries such as Azerbaijan and Belarus, which are experiencing political conflicts and attempts at institutional rupture. It is interesting to highlight that on a global basis, the peace situation between 2020 and 2021 remained stable, despite the successive political instabilities and civil uprisings exacerbated by the pandemic being identified as risk factors that could worsen the international scenario.

Based on the aforementioned studies (ONU, 2020; ^{World Bank, 2021}; ^{Amnesty Internacional, 2021}; ^{IEP, 2020}; ²⁰²¹), it is possible to conclude that the slow march towards the development of peace, through social justice and the fight against violence, has been curbed in the face of new social obstacles that the pandemic has produced and tensioned. From this perspective, reflecting on the promotion of CP today has become an imperative ethical-scientific commitment to seek new forms of survival worthy of humanity and primarily to promote a future different from the barbarism that accompanies our social history (^{Gros, 2009}; ^{Marcuse , 1999}; ^{Hobsbawm, 2007}).

Regarding the second prerogative of legal nature that supports the realization of our reflection, it is possible to observe its emergence on two complementary planes. At the international level, we found that, based on the risks of nuclear war established during the Cold War (1945 - 1989), the social conflicts processed by the decolonization of the African continent, the installation of a new global economic matrix - neoliberalism (^{Hobsbawn, 2003}, ²⁰⁰⁷), especially due to the resurgence of Peace Research (^{Galtung, 1985}), in the transition from the 20th to the 21st century, a set of supranational organizations (UN, 1999; ^{Unesco, 1981}) indicated and recommended that States and Nations make efforts in favor of the development of a CP that would allow transformation and juxtaposition to the belligerent culture (^{James, 1963}; ^{Žižek, 2009}) that frames the process of hominization and the constitution of societies.

In this thought, it is noted that for supranational organizations the development of CP emerged as a proposal and defense of counterculture in favor of the attempt to create symbolic and material elements in which social conflicts were managed in a non-violent way and primarily that socioeconomic development was established based on social justice, equity and respect for and enforcement of human rights (^{Santos, 2021}; ^{Santos, Sousa, 2019}). Underlying this understanding, Education for Peace (EFP) and Education in and for Human Rights appeared as one of the main strategies highlighted as fields/domains that would possibly allow the dissemination of CP aiming to better confront social crises - just like the one caused by the pandemic.

Regarding the national plan, influenced by the recommendations of the aforementioned supranational organizations and considering that Brazil is a signatory to a set of diplomatic agreements to benefit the development and defense of human rights (^{ONU, 1948}), in 2006, the Brazilian State launched the National Human Rights Education Plan (PNEDH) as a public policy that brought in its scope special attention to the defense of Brazilian scientific development regarding CP. Let's see:

The guiding principles of human rights education in basic education are: [as a programmatic action] [...] Encourage studies and research on human rights violations in the education system and other relevant topics to develop a culture of peace and citizenship (Brazil, 2006, p. 22, emphasis added).

In symmetry with the PNEDH, the Brazilian State reiterated the defense of the CP in the recent inclusion²⁷ of items in art. 12 in the section that addresses the organization of national education in the Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education (Law 9,393, of December 20, 1996 - LDB). As the fragment presents:

Art. 12. Educational establishments, respecting common standards and those of their education system, will be responsible for: I - preparing and implementing their pedagogical proposal; [...]; IX - promote awareness, prevention and combat measures against all types of violence, especially systematic intimidation (bullying), within schools; X - establish actions aimed at promoting a culture of peace in schools (Brazil, 1996, emphasis added).

In turn, in harmony with the defenses of CP in the PNEDH and LDB, the Brazilian State inserted CP in the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC), both as a skill to be developed in the History discipline of the 9th year of Elementary School²⁸ and as a specific competence of Religious Education for all Elementary Education²⁹. Thus, although CP has the potential to permeate all BNCC axes as a skill and competence to be developed, it is noted that this record demonstrates that there is a small irenist movement/germ in the thinking of public educational policy in Brazil.

Therefore, it is demonstrated that both at the international level (^{ONU, 1999a}; ^{Unesco, 1999}, ¹⁹⁹⁵) and at the national level (Brazil, 1996, 2006, 2017) there is the crystallization of a legal framework supporting and establishing the importance of promoting CP in the scientific scope, as well as in its development, through education. Thus, reflecting on CP, despite it being fundamental in itself for the development of an education whose social commitment is to transform subjects, collectives and society in a non-violent and peaceful way (^{Freire, 2006}; ^{Santos, 2017}), at the same time, carrying out this meditation in the current context is even more important, as this analysis has the potential to indicate how the process of executing/implementing CP could take place in a school/education that presents a complex set of social fissures stressed by the pandemic.

In turn, the last prerogative for carrying out this reflection is theoretical in nature. In a tight summary, we highlight the results of two studies carried out by us (^{Santos, 2017}, ²⁰²¹) which aimed to map scientific productions that dealt with CP/EFP and studies on social representations (^{Moscovici, 1961/2012}):

1st Study: Aiming to establish a bibliographic survey of theses and dissertations produced in Brazil dedicated to the articulation of CP/EFP and studies in social representation - from 2000 to 2016 and allocated in the repositories of the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD), of Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Capes) and the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP) - we verified the existence³⁰ a total of: BDTD - 39 dissertations and 15 theses; Capes - 12 dissertations and 4 theses; PUC-SP - 1 dissertation and 1 thesis.

From the analysis of this material, a low number of investigations in the aforementioned scientific formats on CP/EFP was revealed, compared to other phenomena/objects researched in the areas of knowledge³¹ inventoried. Furthermore, no studies were found articulating CP/EFP with the Theory of Social Representations (^{Moscovici, 1961/2012}) (TSR), consequently indicating a lack of research that articulated these fields.

2nd Study: Analyzing trends in scientific articles - produced during 2008 to 2018 - by research groups registered and certified by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), which had Lines of Research in CP/EFP³², we discovered that: there were only 9 Brazilian research groups - with a total of 37 researchers - interested in developing studies on CP/EFP; and between the aforementioned period, 213 scientific articles were produced.

Analyzing part of these articles³³, the following were found: a preponderance of studies of a theoretical nature (70.7%) under investigations of an empirical nature (29.2%); the scientific disciplines of Physical Education and International Relations are established with a greater predominance of scientific production on CP/EFP - in other words, there is a lack of studies on CP/EFP from the area of knowledge (Capes, 2017) of education; no studies were found that adopted the theoretical-methodological contribution of TSR, nor any other contribution that provides a psychosocial interpretative approach.

In view of these two studies (^{Santos, 2017}, ²⁰²¹), it is demonstrated that, although there is a growing Brazilian scientific movement in favor of the reflection of CP and EFP, it is noted that in the area of knowledge (Capes, 2017) of education given theme /field still appears shy; in turn, it appears that in the context of Brazilian academy there is the existence of an investigative vacuum that articulates CP/EFP from a psychosocial perspective. Consequently, we conclude that reflecting on CP/EFP, articulating it with the psychosocial perspective - specifically, TSR - applied to the educational context, allows us to expand our understanding of the complex symbolic and material aspects that permeate the social elements that make up the educational phenomenon³⁴.

Thus, light is shed on how subjects and social groupings evaluate, judge, take a position, regulate their conduct, develop their practices/discourses and, primarily, elaborate and re-elaborate their knowledge/awareness (^{Ben Alaya, 2020}) in a historical situation in which the thinking environment³⁵ it was drastically restructured by the contingencies of the pandemic (^{Rateau; Tavani; Delouvée, 2021}; ^{Apostolidis; Santos, 2020}; ^{Páez; Pérez, 2020}). In parallel, we understand that analyzing the pandemic social fabric allows us to expand psychosocial and irenist analyzes in favor of the peaceful transformation of tense and exacerbated conflicts in learning environments.

Therefore, based on these three prerogatives of a social, legal and theoretical nature, we argue here that investigating the complex social phenomena aggravated by the pandemic from complementary perspectives (^{Santos, 2017}, ²⁰²¹) - from the Culture of Peace and studies of Social Representations (^{Moscovici, 1961/2012}) - will allow us, as a scientific community, to better propose and structure possible action and intervention strategies in the different educational contexts affected and modified differently by Covid-19.

3 CHALLENGES OF THE PANDEMIC IN THE SCHOOL CONTEXT

Among the series of social challenges imposed and resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic that have refracted in the educational universe, fundamentally the resurgence of violence stands out (^{Unicef, 2021};Graziano et al., 2020; ^{Santos, 2020}). Taking Johan ^{Galtung's irenist thought (Galtung, 1985}) as an interpretative prism, we observe the tension of the so-called direct, structural and cultural violence³⁶ on education; in this way, dialogically, it contributes to reconfirming the psychosocial contexts of learning environments, as well as remodeling the historical social obstacles to the development of CP today.

At first glance, with regard to direct violence (^{Galtung, 1985}) notable from the pandemic and which directly impacted the school context, it is possible to highlight the worsening of school communities marked by psychological suffering and, especially, permeated by individual and collective mourning processes.

As shown in the study carried out during the first half of 2020 by the Carlos Chagas Foundation (FCC) (^{Villas Boas et al., 2020}) with almost 15,000 teachers from all states in Brazil regarding the psychosocial impacts of the pandemic on Basic Education, it was concluded that in the evaluation of these teachers, 53.8% of their students had an increase in anxiety/depression and 49.7% showed a decrease in learning. In turn, symmetrically, within the scope of Higher Education, the studies by ^{Maia and Dias (2020}) and ^{Teodoro et al. (2021}) reveal that Brazilian university students developed depression, anxiety, panic and stress during the first year of the pandemic.

On the other hand, with regard to the quality of mental health of education professionals - especially teachers -, it is noted that, due to the shocks caused by the pandemic in formal education, these professionals are currently exposed to new stressors (^{Rafiq, 2021}; ^{Wang; Wang, 2020}). With this thought, the mental illnesses that recurrently affect education professionals, such as bipolar affective disorder, mild depressive disorder, adjustment disorder, Burnout syndrome or professional burnout syndrome and generalized anxiety, have assumed a new level of harmfulness, since these illnesses began to be manifested and framed by a new social basis of anguish - for example: of being contaminated - and blurred understandings regarding individual and collective expectations (^{Silva, 2020}).

That said, these studies suggest that the pandemic, while it largely reconfigured the school, teaching work and especially the production of knowledge/awareness, negatively impacted the lives of students, as well as education professionals (^{Pachiega; Milani, 2020}). Therefore, a facet of direct violence was intensified and spread, which until now education had not witnessed in such a vigorous and dizzying way in the school community.

In turn, aggravating this facet of direct violence, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations - FAO (Graziano et al., 2020), the pandemic, by causing the temporary closure of schools, specifically contributed to the interruption in Latin America and the Caribbean of school feeding programs that benefited more than 85 million children - of this universe, the organization estimates that 10 million children only have school lunches as their main daily source of nutrition. Consequently, warns the organization, the poorest populations end up being the social niche that has suffered most not only from the pandemic per se, but also from hunger and the lack of access to nutritional food enhanced by it (Graziano et al., 2020).

Therefore, despite the FAO (Graziano et al.,2020) recognize that child malnutrition and the chronic crisis of non-egalitarian food distribution are historical social problems in developing countries, what materializes in an underlying way in this alert is the understanding that the temporary closure of schools has interrupted, curtailed or even made it difficult that certain students had access, through the school system, to the possibility of having one of their fundamental rights - food (^{Ferraz; Leite, 2011}) - guaranteed, albeit in an incipient form, by the State.

In turn, with regard to structural violence (^{Galtung, 1985}) it was revealed from the installation of the pandemic in the school context, the fissure/crack in the development of learning that students suffered due to the temporary closure of schools.

According to an investigation by Unesco (2021), one year after the start of the pandemic, approximately more than 800 million students were still experiencing significant interruptions in their education. The organization calculated that worldwide schools were completely closed for an average of 3.5 months (14 weeks); however, this number varies when contrasting the case of Latin American and Caribbean countries, which had an average of up to 5 months (20 weeks) with schools completely closed³⁷, with European countries - 2.5 months (10 weeks) - and Oceania - just 1 month (Unesco, 2021). In other words, these data clearly explain that once again students from developing countries were the most compromised to their educational development in the aforementioned period.

Linked to this macro situation, at the Brazilian level, the Unicef study (2021) showed that during 2020 the exception was Brazilian children and adolescents who were still attending school. The study revealed that, if in 2019 almost 1.1 million children and adolescents of compulsory school age were already out of school, by November 2020 it was estimated that more than 5 million between 6 and 17 years old did not have access to education in Brazil. Therefore, the pandemic dramatically contributes to clearly showing the problems of difficult access, permanence and social inequality that Brazilian students face in order to realize their right to formal education/learning.

Complementing this thought, it can be highlighted that in the Brazilian context this perverse educational exclusion has color, class, sex and territory (^{Unicef, 2021}).

Combining the variables color and social class, this Unicef study (2021) revealed that black, indigenous and mixed-race students from families with a per capita income of up to half a minimum wage (61.9%) constitute a social stratum that suffered most from the direct or indirect impact of the pandemic. In turn, with regard to sex, if we compare the reasons why Brazilian girls and boys highlighted the fact that the pandemic had disrupted their studies, it appears that girls indicated that they had less time to study - or even dropped out of school - due to having to take care of household chores, elderly people, people with disabilities or even because they are pregnant (^{Unicef, 2021}). In other words, the impact of the pandemic on the female student population was more aggravated, possibly due to the refraction of a historical-social pillar symbolically sedimented by sexism and patriarchalism.

In turn, still in relation to the aforementioned study, with regard to the territory, it was found that, comparing the regions of Brazil, it is noted that students residing in the North and Northeast regions were those who found it most difficult to access to education during the pandemic period. Furthermore, comparing the Brazilian student population living in rural and urban areas, it was concluded that students from rural areas - mainly those from the Center-West and South regions - were those who had the greatest difficulty in staying and accessing formal education during the pandemic (^{Unicef, 2021}). In another way, the pandemic contributed significantly to the fact that the rural student population, which has historically been and is marginalized and made invisible by public authorities, did not experience academic failure, but directly suffered the worsening of a sociocultural process of academic failure (^{Charlot, 2000}), in which a social structure deprives them of recognition (^{Honneth, 2003}) and, especially, does not offer concrete material conditions for the development of quality education.

Based on the Unicef study (2021), we can conclude that it is not correct to point out that the social impacts of the pandemic on Brazilian education are the result of a new crisis, an isolated fact or a case-by-case social occurrence, but, above all, that, as the pandemic took place in a political-social context that historically was and is framed according to the privilege of some to the detriment of the suffering of many, the pandemic as a social phenomenon allowed us to clearly visualize a structurally violent, perverse and exclusionary everyday life, which Brazilian students often struggle to have the right to learn (^{Ponce et al., 2020}). As ^{Chauí (2013}, p. 267) interprets when highlighting how public power and the Brazilian ruling elite crookedly represent and minimize social crises:

This horror at the reality of contradictions is expressed in the way the Brazilian ruling class elaborates crisis situations. A crisis is never understood as the result of latent contradictions that became manifest through the historical process and that need to be worked on socially and politically. The crisis is always converted into the ghost of the crisis, an inexplicable and sudden interruption of irrationality threatening the social and political order. Chaos. Danger.

Finally, with regard to cultural violence (^{Galtung, 1985}), which was patently heightened by the pandemic in the school context, the worsening of the tortuous process of school education inclusion for children and young people during the pandemic period must be highlighted³⁸.

In view of the temporary closure of schools, it appears that one of the main emergency pedagogical strategies used was remote teaching, constituting one of the first solutions to the continuity of education for children and young people. However, as ^{Almeida (2020}) and ^{Gatti, Santos and Alves (2020}) recall, given 'solution'/strategy was confronted in certain countries - mostly developing countries - with a school and population network not digitally included and above all without access to quality internet, cell phone, tablet, radio and television.

Specifically paying attention to the Brazilian case, although 88.3% of school-age children and young people had access to the internet at the beginning of the pandemic, approximately 4.3 million students still did not have access to the internet, and of this universe 4.1 Millions studied in public education institutions (^{IBGE, 2020}). Clarifying this reality, among the reasons given by these public school students for not accessing the internet, 26.1% highlighted that internet service is expensive; 19.3% point out that the necessary electronic equipment is expensive; 18.5% have a lack of interest; 16% do not know how to use the internet; 11.2% indicate that internet access service is unavailable in their location; and 8.9% another reason (^{IBGE, 2020}).

Composing this scenario and once again demonstrating the weaknesses of the Brazilian State in fulfilling the right to learning/education, during the pandemic and the installation of the so-called 'emergency education', after the Legislature debated, approved and forwarded Bill (PL) 3,477, of 2020 - which obliged the Federal Government to guarantee access to the internet, for educational purposes, to students and teachers of public basic education -, for presidential sanction, the Executive vetoed this proposal in its entirety due to understanding that it threatened the fiscal balance of the Union.

Subsequently, imposing a defeat on the Executive, the National Congress rejected the aforementioned veto; and, in response, the Executive appealed to the Judiciary against such an act. However, not being successful in its endeavor, compelled by both the Legislative, Judiciary and public opinion, the Executive sanctioned and published the aforementioned PL, converted into Law 14,172, of June 10, 2021³⁹. However, some time later, still upset with the newly published rule, the Executive filed a Direct Action of Unconstitutionality (ADI) 6,926, arguing that the aforementioned law challenged the legislative process, as it would violate the fiscal conditions for the approval of actions government agencies during the pandemic and exceeded the spending ceiling established by Constitutional Amendment 95, of 2016. Therefore, the Executive was successful in extending the deadline to forward the amounts established in the Law to the States and Municipalities, as well as delaying the regulation of these resources in the management council of the Telecommunications Services Universalization Fund (Fust) of the Ministry of Communications.

In view of this occurrence, it is illustrative that, although certain powers of the Brazilian State tried to allocate resources to benefit digital inclusion and universal access to the internet in public schools - especially due to the pandemic -, it is noted that there was an oscillating and sophisticated movement of the Executive in trying to hinder/curb/embarrass the same agenda.

In this thought, in agreement with the psychosocial view of ^{Sawaia (2001}) and ^{Freitas (2020}), it is observed that this stance of the Brazilian State has helped the public school to become an institution characterized under the shadow of the perverse inclusion of students in the context of emergency teaching. Therefore, at the same time that the State emphasizes that schools must promote the digital inclusion of students, it also recognizes that access to the internet is one of the main pedagogical tools that, whether in the pandemic context or not, also represents a fundamental prerequisite for the development of remote teaching or the use of educational technologies. In a contradictory way, this same State and this public school, historically vilified, fail to offer material and symbolic conditions for the full development of students' potential. As ^{Freitas (2020}, p. 324) summarizes:

The cruelty of institutional bad faith lies in guaranteeing the permanence of the rabble at school, without this meaning, however, their effective inclusion in the school world, as their social condition and the institution itself prevent the construction of a positive affective relationship with knowledge. [...] The symbolic violence engendered by institutional bad faith made the chances of success unfeasible [...].

On the other hand, a product of this institutional bad faith, in a surreptitious way a public discourse is nurtured in society, imbued with authoritarian, classist and elitist representations, which, instead of denouncing the actions of the State and demanding the right to education and learning, quality to public school students, blames parents/guardians for allegedly not assisting/taking care of their children/young people 'correctly' (Pereira; ^{Guareschi, 2014}). Therefore, an environment of thought is tacitly constituted (^{Moscovici, 2010}) according to which beliefs, values and norms are aligned in order to create cultural violence, which is not questioned or little raised in the public debate regarding non-compliance of these students' right to learning itself, as this debate is eclipsed by the naturalization of a collective understanding that the teaching and learning of children and young people are strictly the responsibility of parents/guardians, and not also of society and the State.

In this way, a social fabric is slowly spun in which responsibility is transmuted into blaming and symbolic violence directed at socially vulnerable population layers because, both at the personal and group levels, it is more palatable and comfortable to blame/point to the Other as the agent responsible for the academic failure of a range of students than recognizing that the failure of the social structure is the co-authorship/co-responsibility of a collective anchored in authoritarianism, anger and the privilege of one social status/class over another (^{Dardot; Laval, 2016}; ^{Sodré, 2021}).

Given these heightened challenges imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic for the development of CP in the school context, in a simplified way, what draws attention is that, although the phenomenon of violence - barbarism (^{Adorno, 2000}; ^{Wieviorka, 2006}) -, has always been profiled in the school environment and in societies as a whole, from the pandemic onwards, the notions, ideas, social knowledge, beliefs, values, norms and social representations of social agents potentially began to be developed in social contexts (^{Ben Alaya, 2020}), modulated by a thinking environment (^{Moscovici, 2010}) prominently rooted in a cultural, political, economic and social network of violated subjects. Therefore, in agreement with ^{Santos (2020}) and ^{Krenak (2019}), the possibility of developing a Culture of Peace and the processual construction of peace based on equal opportunities and social justice becomes increasingly remote, distanced and collectively hopeless.

4 PATHS TO PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE FOR PEACE IN (POST) PANDEMIC

Aware of the complexity of the aforementioned social challenges that hinder the establishment of school contexts registered and circumscribed by the Culture of Peace, it is essential to emphasize that the notes that follow regarding some paths for the psychosocial development of the Culture of Peace in the pandemic school context and post-pandemic are not reflective prescriptions, but rather, partial and fragmented meditations that aim to expose the potential contributions of studies on social representations in the procedural development of said culture in the face of the social contingencies stressed and imposed by the pandemic.

The first contribution that studies on social representations demonstrate is in the analysis and mapping of the psychosocial elements that make up the so-called social thought. Starting from the understanding that, in the same way that societies are constituted by economic, political and cultural systems, ^{Moscovici (1988}) advises that it is essential that social scientists pay attention to the systems of thought that create social groupings; in this perspective, synthetically, social thoughts have been investigated in research on social representations as a symbolic atmosphere historically developed by knowledge, awareness, imaginary, customs, beliefs, values, representations, ideologies and norms that are dynamically realigned daily by subjects/groups, in order to guide their conduct, practices and social actions and, especially, intelligibility of reality and relating to others (^{Marková, 2006}, ²⁰¹⁷).

With this reasoning, initially, we advocate that the first major contribution of studies on social representations to the development of the Culture of Peace in the school environment focuses on the reflective possibility of investigating the new contradictions of social thought installed and created from the pandemic situation, with the benefit of evaluating and systematizing new individual and collective strategies for intervention and modification of a material and symbolic reality that has historically naturalized barbarism and violence (^{Santos; Sousa, 2018}). In this way, light can be shed on the complex representational contents that are inscribed and written in our civilizational and cultural process (^{Elias, 1994}).

In this logic, it must be noted that, as the pandemic emerges as a health crisis with social repercussions of still incalculable proportions, it must be understood that developing the Culture of Peace having as its precept the psychosocial analysis of the elements that make up the social thought emerges in our historical moment as a unique and vital theoretical and social opportunity/undertaking to try to propose other cultural markers than those historically supported by barbarism, the brutalization of being and the naturalization of violence (^{Adorno, 2000}; ^{Wieviorka, 2006} ; ^{Santos, 2020}; ^{Krenak, 2019}), because in times of crisis and insurrection especially social representations are revealed, because:

People are then more willing to talk, images and expressions are more spontaneous. Individuals are motivated by their desire to understand an increasingly unfamiliar and disturbing world. Social representations are transparent, as the divisions and barriers between private and public worlds have become confusing (^{Moscovici, 2010}, p. 91).

In this line of thought, when we defend that one of the paths for the psychosocial development of the Culture of Peace in the school context is the analysis of social thoughts, we simultaneously understand that given meditation provides the opportunity to identify and analyze contradictory traits of a social thought in which the representational processes of objectification - selection of information, figurative schematization (image) and naturalization - and anchoring - naming and categorization -, which help both in the intelligibility of social objects and in the construction of reality itself (^{Jodelet, 2017}), become increasingly more litigious processes - Kulturkampf (^{Moscovici, 2012}) -, in which interpretations, discourses, narratives and legitimations are disputed between the different social segments (^{Páez; Pérez, 2020}).

Thus, although we recognize that studying social thought presupposes reflecting on the conflicts that form it (^{Moscovici, 2010}), it is noted that investigating the social thought nowadays with the aim of extracting data from it for the development of the Culture of Peace in the school universe especially shelters the ability to highlight the contradictions/tensions and conflicts that surreptitiously modulate societies, as well as how we can better understand how given knowledge - mainly common and scientific sense - comes to be disseminated, propagated, propagandized, accepted, valued and internalized in the collective scope and assume a vitality and plasticity, which can be drastically exchanged by this same collective in order to accommodate and assimilate this new reality that the pandemic has imposed (^{Moscovici, 2012}).

In other words, when we highlight that one of the paths for the psychosocial development of the Culture of Peace in the pandemic and post-pandemic school environment runs through the analysis of social thought, we signal that it is through a better intelligibility of the contradictions that make up social thought that possibly we can better scrutinize the representational processes, “perceptual and imaginary of the Subject, the social forces and the underlying cultural contents [...], as well as the mediating function between individual and society” (^{Santos, 2005}, p. 124), with the objective of critically carrying out an anamnesis of this social malaise and presenting actions and interventions to benefit the procedural elaboration of the Culture of Peace in harmony with the tuning fork of current social thought, accompanied by its tensions, conflicts and idiosyncrasies.

On the other hand, the second contribution that research on social representations can provide to the psychosocial development of the Culture of Peace in the school context focuses on the analysis of the social. According to scholars (^{Marková, 2006}, ²⁰¹⁷; ^{Guareschi; Roso, 2014}), the TSR perspective emerged from the 1960s within the scope of French Social Psychology as a theory that rescues the social within the scope of this discipline, a since an ontological turn was established in which the being was no longer conceived in an 'isolated way' - individual -, determined by external elements and, especially, is not analyzed in a binary/dual way - as advocated by behaviorists and cognitivists at that time -, and a social subject (ego) began to be created that is understood in a close dialogical relationship/interaction with the alter (others), social objects and situated in a living context.

With this reasoning, while studies on social representations emphasize that the social is evidenced by the ego-alter-object interaction and contexts, it is simultaneously indicated that this social is complex, dynamic, contradictory, historical and marked by power relations, domination, affections and projections (^{Pombo-de-Barros; Arruda, 2010}). With this reading, it is observed that it is in this social circumscription that ego and alter enjoy the potential to establish meetings, dialogues, recognize each other (^{Marková, 2017}; ^{Honneth, 2003}) and fundamentally develop critical consciousnesses that germinate creative and innovative actions - in material and symbolic sphere- of juxtaposition to exclusionary, perverse, alienating, authoritarian social norms and values that silently suppress the conditions of emancipation of subjects/collectives (^{Moscovici, 2011b}).

Given this understanding of the social in studies on social representations, we primarily indicate that the psychosocial development of the Culture of Peace in the pandemic and post-pandemic school context presupposes as a path an accurate look at social relationships/interactions in order to promote dialogue between different ones. With this understanding, influenced by multiculturalism studies (^{McLaren, 1998}; ^{Candau, 2008}; ^{Torres, 2001}), it should be noted that cultural relationships are not romantic or idyllic relationships, however they are composed of issues relating to the struggle for power, domination, prejudice, discrimination and segregation. Consequently, the Culture of Peace proclaimed here refuses to accept culture as non-conflictive, but rather that 'it is within' and 'through' cultural dynamics that both 'critical consciousness' and 'enlightenment' (^{Adorno, 2000}) can be developed and 'dialogue with differences' can manifest itself by coloring life, instilling forms of resistance and affirmation (^{Hooks, 2013}) within the scope of an ethical-political reflection committed to social justice. As ^{Freire (1996}, p. 60) recalls:

It is in this sense [...] that true dialogicity, in which dialogical subjects learn and grow in difference, especially in respect for it, is the way of being coherently demanded by beings who, unfinished, assuming themselves as such, become radically ethical.

In this logic, establishing a psychosocial view based on studies on social representations, highlighting this social aspect abruptly modified by the pandemic, brings as an opportunity the possibility of developing skillful critical interpretations to better build social spaces of dissent (^{Moscovici, 2011a}), recognize the voice and listen to historically vilified/silenced populations and agendas (^{Moscovici, 2010}) and encourage, both at the individual and collective level, the strengthening of tactics and strategies (^{Certeau, 1999}) of non-violent opposition to a daily life circumscribed by barbarism (^{Galtung, 1985} ). Therefore, having TSR as a subsidy to investigate the social becomes a relevant reading key for its transformation, while it is in this investigative process that we can meditate on social conflicts and tensions in order to provide bases for dialogue between ego -alter (^{Abdalla; Villas Boas, 2018}).

Finally, the third contribution that studies on social representations can provide to the psychosocial development of the Culture of Peace in the school context is the analysis of the experiences developed by subjects/groups in a context of pandemic contingencies. Recognizing the plurality of understandings surrounding the notions of experience (Villas ^{Boas, 2017}; ^{Larrosa, 2002}), in short, the Moscovici psychosocial analysis conceives experience as the situation that transcends and touches the subject/social group, radically realigning its existence.

Complementing this conception, ^{Jodelet (2017}) indicates that the experience of analysis within the studies of social representations presupposes an accurate look at what is experienced⁴⁰, because it is through this analytical process that it is possible to better scrutinize the affective dimensions⁴¹ and cognitive⁴² which guide both the continuous construction and modification of the identities of subjects/groups and the processes of alterity. Therefore, for the author to pay attention to the experience, it is essential to highlight subjectivities and the ego-alter relationship situated in a context that dialogically affects and is affected by a given relationship/interaction. As ^{Silva (2011}, p. 29) didactically highlights:

The combination of experience and subjectivity allows, on the one hand, to give the notion of experience a greater dimension than the objective relationship with the world: experience means what one is, and not just what one does. On the other hand, the association of subjectivity with experience leads us to consider the dynamic character of the notion of subject: it is not a metaphysical, formal or even psychological entity, but the way of being of human reality considered as existence (emphasis added by the author).

In view of this understanding of experience, we point out that the psychosocial development of the Culture of Peace in the post-pandemic school context implies taking into account the collectively shared knowledge and awareness that subsidize the development of experiences by the school community based on this radical situation that the pandemic was and has been. From ^{Santos (2020}), although the coronavirus manifested itself differently for different social classes/levels, as well as the institutional responses to it were diverse, in a common way Covid-19 played the pedagogical role of producing collective experiences in an environment of thought (^{Moscovici, 2010}) inscribed by the sensation of human fragility, faced with the possibility of our extermination, by the decline in the belief of the capitalist system in responding promptly to global social crises and, fundamentally, by the fabric of a reality crossed by disrespect for the human person. Therefore, currently developing the Culture of Peace involves the critical-investigative action of making sure that, beyond the school community, societies as a whole developed under the shadow of death, premature finitude, mourning, helplessness, funeral rites, realigned projects, sublimatory bitterness, trauma and violence (^{Birman, 2021}), a set of deeply delicate experiences that silently reoriented and have guided the way we live, of coexisting as others - human and non-human - and the subject exists in the world.

With this thought, we advocate that currently developing the Culture of Peace in the school universe, based on the psychosocial support of TSR, invariably involves having as an analytical path the lived experiences - positive and negative - that flourished during the pandemic period.

In accord with, it is up to schools to sensitively welcome and listen to their communities and democratically realign their curricula so that they are in line with this new social reality (^{Casali, 2020}; ^{Almeida, 2020}), and this complex symbolic web that goes back to the contradictions of the social thinking, new social relations and lived experiences produced by the pandemic. In this way, we emphasize that the psychosocial development of the Culture of Peace in schools today involves the construction of school curricula that recognize the subjects/grouping, the subjectivities and primarily the social contexts (^{BEN ALAYA, 2020}) of elaboration and re-elaboration of social representations and practices .

5 FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

When we meditate through the psychosocial perspective of studies in social representations (Moscovici, 1961/2012) about the social challenges imposed and stressed by the Covid-19 pandemic in order to come up with theoretical points for the development of the Culture of Peace in the current school context, this essay argued that, despite recognizing the complexity of violence (^{Galtung, 1985}) that plagues both schools and societies, it is essential to counteract the Culture of Barbarism (^{Adorno, 2000}; ^{Elias, 1994}) and, in the process, develop the Culture of Peace (^{Guimarães, 2008}) to meditate on social relations and intervene in what is real, having the understanding that the subject is a historical being of power, affections, contradiction (^{Jodelet, 2009}), of close relationship with others and with contexts (^{Marková, 2006}, 2017), and that the formation and improvement of their critical consciousness requires a pacifist educational endeavor.

In addition to this defense, specifically focusing on the Brazilian case, it should be noted that currently presenting propositions in favor of the psychosocial development of the Culture of Peace in the school environment appears to be a daunting task, given that the pandemic context, at the same time as it opened social fissures, intensified historical contradictions, inequalities, conflicts and tensions profiled both in the symbolic and material/concrete spheres. Therefore, taking into account the material and symbolic conditions that the pandemic produced or even complemented in Brazilian society, we understand, in harmony with scholars (^{Baltieri; Sousa; Gonçalves, 2020}; ^{Sousa; Rocha, 2021}), that proposing any notes for the development of the aforementioned culture involves the critical action of recognizing that, if before the Covid-19 pandemic the social rights of the school community - especially of students and teachers - were already being slowly degraded (^{Ponce et al., 2020}), during this pandemic the dilapidation of social rights occurred at an accelerated rate and under the cloak of an authoritarian state aegis (^{Santos, 2020}; ^{Gatti; Shaw; Pereira, 2021}).

In other words, meditating today in favor of promoting the Culture of Peace in the Brazilian school environment involves being aware that the State has set in motion a silent political process that leaves the school community helpless. Thus, in a sophisticated way, taking advantage of the fact that the pandemic produced a scenario of exceptionality in societies, this State, while failing to enforce social rights, has surreptitiously been removing/deregulating hard-earned rights (^{Dowbor, 2017}; ^{Dardot; Laval, 2016}) and has primarily been acting in a non-sensitive way (^{Levinas, 2010}) and prevaricating in relation to the recognition (^{Honneth, 2003}) of others - especially social minorities and popular classes. Therefore, we must be clear that, in order to better propose the Culture of Peace in a school fabric torn apart by historical violence and exacerbated by the pandemic, we presuppose developing an accurate look at the complex contradictions that inscribe porous social thought - such as studies in social representations have been interested in the last sixty years.

At the same time, although we understand the tortuous task of procedural elaboration of the Culture of Peace in the educational and non-educational universe, we advocate that the Theory of Social Representations (^{Moscovici, 2012}) applied to education holds the theoretical-methodological potential of producing inputs so that school community can reinvent its practices, predominantly, having as pillars: the commitment to humanization (^{Freire, 1996}); the development of ethics based on responsibility towards others (^{Levinas, 1993}); and be focused on social transformation and the construction of a world with social justice through dialogue (^{Marková, 2017}). Therefore, although we understand that the Covid-19 pandemic has intensified a set of barriers to promoting peace, we interpret that this moment stands as a historic opportunity to redirect our civilizational process (^{Elias, 1994}; ^{Santos, 2020}) in favor of rebuilding the world.