Introduction

The present article aims to analyze practices of resistance students develop against the effects of power relations present in a public school. The analysis has taken the post-structuralist theoretical field as a reference, by understanding, in accordance with Foucault, that whenever there are power relations, there are also resistance practices, which are never exterior to power; on the contrary, the resistance practices occur in the very place where there are power relations. From this perspective, both power relations and resistance practices are productive and have potency for creation and transformation.

Through the analysis of interviews with teachers and observation of students, we show that what the school regards as ‘undisciplined’ behavior and a ‘learning gap’ the contents of the curricular proposals may also be seen as students’ practices of resistance to the homogeneity required by the school. To think these students’ activities as practices of resistance, force relations forming around power relations - a power that subdue bodies and conducts - enable the creation of spots of tension, fissures, destabilization, and transformation in the instituted power relations. Hence, we regard the school context beyond the control and normalization devices, that is, the school becomes a space of daily struggles, a place for a frequent game of forces - forces of subjection but also forces or resistance and freedom practices.

We first present the Foucaultian concepts of power and resistance to show that this game of forces is present in school institutions and in the constitution of is subjects. Secondly, we problematize what is understood by the school as ‘unruly behavior’ and ‘gal in learning’ to show these students’ movements/behaviors can be taken as practices of resistance against the instituted power relations’ effects. These resistance practices empower other ways of thinking about educational processes.

The school where our study took place is a state public institution located in the Central-West area of Brazil. It is an elementary school, with classes ranging from 1^st grade up to 9^th grade. We have conducted semi-structured interviews with nine teachers during the years of 2014 and 2015. All interviews took place in the teachers’ room. They were recorded with teachers’ consent and then transcribed for later analysis. To ensure the anonymity of the research subjects, we use fictitious names whenever we refer to them.

The teachers interviewed are from the 6^th to the 9^th grade of elementary education. They come from all areas of knowledge - Sciences, English, Portuguese, Math, Arts, History, Physical Education, Religious Education, and Geography. Six out of the interviewees are female teachers, and three are male teachers; seven are permanent teachers, and two of them are not permanent teachers. All of them have a higher education degree, and their age ranges from 26 to 45 years. As for teaching time, five teachers have more than ten years of experience, three of them have five to 10 years of experience, and one of them has one years of teaching experience.

We have also observed students from 6^th grade to the 9^th grade before and after class time - when they arrived at the school, during the break time, exit time, in the court of sports, when they talked with their teachers in the corridors. Our observation of students in these spaces were facilitated by the fact that the school attends only students from the 6^th to the 9^th grades in the evening period. Such observations were registered in our field book for later analysis.

According to our theoretical field, both teachers’ interviews and the observations of students we have conducted to collect data are tools seen as marked by subjectivity, warding off the chance of any objectivity and neutrality in the resulting knowledge. We are aware of the impossibility of apprehending the reality the way modernity first thought; we try to be able to contextualize, analyze, problematize, change singular and contextual truths. “Challenging a discourse, disqualifying statements, can help overturn the device supporting them.” (^{Veyne, 2009}, p. 104). In this sense, the knowledge produced in the process of this study has always been an interested one, both epistemologically and politically, since “[...] what matters as truth is questioned, it will be determined by a game of forces.” (^{Meyer, 2012}, p. 54). Our research is part of this process of dispute for the production of truths.

On ‘indisciplines’ - or on practices of resistance of students to the school’s desired homogeneity

In general, the school does not question those attitudes and behaviors considered as disciplined, because somehow the unruly behavior, according to ^{Ratto (2007}) involves passivity. The action takes place around “[...] those behaviors and attitudes goes beyond what is expected in such a place and are ranked generally as undisciplined” (^{Dinali & Ferrari, 2011}, p. 243). It is about indiscipline that we are going to consider in the following pages, regarding ‘unruly behavior’ as a practice of resistance. In the Foucaultian perspective, indiscipline as a resistance practice means positivity, creative action, novelty, event - the event is what does not cease to happen, it is the expression of the forces of becoming.

We consider the relationship between discipline and indiscipline in the school where our study was carried out as a game of forces. This is because where there are power relations, on the one hand, there are movements of resistance, on the other (^{Foucault, 1988}). So, no matter how we strive to create a ‘disciplined’ environment, in accordance with the ‘norm’, there will always be conflicting and resistance reactions. This expression of resistance brings forth significant potentialities, for they “[...] may place us before the experience of alterity, in the sense of the radically other, i.e., of those that do not manifest our expectations, do not confirm our intentions nor reaffirm our identity” (^{Ratto, 2007}, p. 178). It may also lead us to reflect upon the meaning of pedagogical practices that deny conflict, difference, the behavior that goes beyond the norm, bearing mind states of fullness and harmony.

What Ms. Verônica and Mr. Pedro, who teach at the school, say about indiscipline translates well this game of forces between power relations and practices of resistance. Verônica talks about the hardships involved in keeping students disciplined: “Indiscipline makes it very hard; sometimes we spend 10-15 minutes to get their attention, to cease playing, to concentrate for us to be able to work - so, indiscipline is what has bothered me the most” (Ms. Verônica). Mr. Pedro says: “Today we have a lot of problems involving indiscipline […] students need to have limits […] it is a difficult task for all of us, it is not easy, but we try” (Mr. Pedro).

Verônica’s and Pedro’s thought in relation to students’ indiscipline makes reflect, on the one hand, about how the power relations, which extend from their training to how they conceive education, influences them in such a way that makes it difficult to see from another perspective the students’ actions and reactions. Seeing students’ ‘undisciplined’ actions as practices of resistance implies breaking out with the discipline/indiscipline duality, in which the former is the norm, and the latter needs to conform. In other words, it implies understanding that the subjects in the school context are always, in one way or another, resisting to subjection processes underway. At the same extent school exerts power, ^{Gallo (2005}) says it undergoes exercises of power.; “[...] to the same extent it generates powers that are its affirmation, it also generates powers that are potential for negation” (^{Gallo, 2005}, p.218).

On the other hand, what Verônica and Pedro say in relation to students’ indiscipline also makes us see some practices of resistance at the school; it shows us some strategies students put in action to react to the forms of subjection exercises. One type of students’ behavior considered a disciplinary problem by the school - for us, it is a practice of resistance - refers to delays, anticipated exits, and absences in class. We say it based on the observations we conducted, from which we point out the case of a student who had arrived late; to go into the classroom, he needed to pass in front of the school secretary, where one of the workers controls the entries and exits of the students. Considering he would be questioned by the person in charge and that he would need to explain the reason for his delay, say said: ‘It was the bus that was late, not me.’ When released, he jumps around and smiles, as if relieved at having been able to justify himself. We say it based also on what Mr. Paulo, another teacher at the school, says about one of the students: “He never comes to class, he arrives too late, leaves early, his parents are convincing” (Mr. Paulo).

We may think that such frequent delays and their explanations, as well as the absences and the need to leave school early, are, amongst other possibilities, forms of resistance of these students to the rigorous control of time, schedules, homogenized and synchronized use of time to which they are submitted. At school time, “[...] one has to be punctual, one has to learn the idea that there is a right time for everything, one has to conform to standardized uses of time, valid for everyone and, at the same time, for all” (^{Ratto, 2007}, p. 153). Internalizing school time and use as homogeneously as possible seems to be one of the conditions for learning. That is why delays, leaving early, bathroom visits - everything that threatens school time norms - are condemned.

In an attempt to control the school regulated time, Mr. Paulo sets some rules in the classroom:

To control their visits to the bathroom, I give them tickets. I give them three tickets for every term. If they want to leave the classroom, for whatever reason, they have to use one ticket. They have three tickets, but if they do not use them during the term I grant them half a point at the end (Mr. Paulo).

It is important no note here that a ‘visit to the bathroom’ becomes a focus of tension in the school. What is lived outside school “[...] as a basic action of ‘going to pee’ - when people simply get up and walk towards a WC to satisfy their need - inside of it can become a potential moment of confusion” (^{Ratto, 2007}, p. 156).

It happens due to the need the school has of making its time a useful, productive, homogenized one. This is related, to a certain extent, to assessment devices. Before large scale assessments, the school is involved in, teachers feel pressured by the long lists of ‘obligatory’ contents to be taught and learned by students in order to get good rates, enforcing a strict curriculum idea towards its subjects and contents. In addition to that, the idea that the teaching quality can be measured by these factors forces an “[...] association of school time to a ‘useful time’, a ‘time of reproduction’, a time to be controlled, scrutinized and homogenized, as much as possible, so that its curricular program can be finished” (^{Ratto, 2007}, p. 163) and those rates can be achieved.

The homogenized, uniform and synchronized use of time, bearing in mind greater productivity - in this case, greater learning -, has already been highlighted by ^{Foucault (1996}) as one of the disciplinary power devices. According to him, what is defined as time-table in the middle of the 18th century “[...] is more than a collective and obligatory rhythm, imposed from the outside; it is a program; it assures the elaboration of the act itself; it controls its development and stages from inside” (^{Foucault, 1996}, p. 137), aiming to maximize time and transform it into work-time. Foucault (1996) singles out that the measured, regulated, synchronized time must be a pure time, without impurities or defects; it must be a time of good quality “[...] through which the body is constantly applied to its exercise. Precision and application are, with regularity, the fundamental virtues of disciplinary time” (^{Foucault, 1996}, p. 137).

It is in relation to this ‘striated space’ of school, characterized by ^{Deleuze e Guattari (1997}) as a cogitatio universalis’ space, which “[...] draws a path that must be followed from one point to another [...]” (^{Deleuze & Guattari, 1997}, p. 39), that many students develop practices of resistance. That is why, as said above, Mr. Paulo is dissatisfied with the student who arrives later in school and leaves early - even though having set rules for the classroom -, saying this is because he is more ‘delicate’ and parents are conniving. These students’ actions - which the school often takes as indiscipline - might suggest lines of flight (^{Deleuze & Parnet, 1998}), the exercise of power, creation becomings, and desterritorializations these students develop against subjectivation processes in force in the school. Regarding these subjectivation processes, we can say that “[...] not only are prisoners treated like children, but children are treated like prisoners” (^{Foucault, 2000}a, p. 73), and that this is what they resist. After all, for the French philosopher “[...] schools resemble prisons a little bit [...]” (^{Foucault, 2000}a, p. 73), notion suggested by Mr. João when he says: “This school is valued because it is an enclosed school, in the center of the city, where the student is not able to jump the wall or leave” (Mr. João).

It explains the need in the school where our study was conducted of an employee in charge of controlling students’ entry and exit so that they stay all the time inside classrooms. With such a watch, the school aims to control some practices of resistance students develop in the school context. Frequent delays, leaving school early, the explanations put forth absences can indication students’ resistances to what ^{Deleuze and Guattari (1997}) call school’s ‘striated space’, where movements must always attend a set of rules. Moreover, at the same time students’ actions and reactions to controlling and normalization devices are forms of resistance to striated space, they trigger other configuration of forces, turning the striated space into a smooth space, which “[...] is wedded to a very particular type of multiplicity: nonmetric, acentered, rhizomatic multiplicities that occupy space without ‘counting’ it and can ‘be explored only by legwork.’” (^{Deleuze & Guattari, 1997}, p. 31).

There is a positivity or a productivity in the disciplines, for, if there is such a game of forces, “[...] it is because there exist power relations and, so, there are possibilities of singularizing different spaces, different forces amongst students, teachers, technicians, coordinators, parents, are in force” (^{Dinali & Ferrari, 2011}, p. 237). Therefore, such resistances make it possible to create spaces of tension, fissures, destabilization, and change in the instituted power relations; resistances result in effects, they break with the continuous space and linear time, and they create other spaces inside the controlled and normalized school time.

Not only the delays, the reasons given, absences and exits early can be seen as unruly behavior in the school studied, but also how people dress, behave, deal with sexuality, i.e., the usage of the body and sexuality. ^{Louro (2000}) says that, in the history of education, the preoccupation with the body always has been central in the planning of pedagogical practices. According to this author, “[...] every schooling process has always been - and still are - worried at watching, controlling, modeling, building the bodies of boys and girls, young men and women” (^{Louro, 2000}, p. 60). ^{Foucault (1996}), in his work Discipline and Punish, formulated the several techniques invented to discipline the body. He said: “A disciplined body is the prerequisite of an efficient gesture (^{Foucault, 1996}, p. 139).

However, the numerous techniques invented to “[...] scrutinize the bodies, know them and school them; to produce gestures, postures, and polite, Christian, civilized, urbanized, docile movements to build healthy, hygienic, adequate and dignified habits” (^{Louro, 2000}, p.60) do not guarantee full control over the bodies in the context of the school studied. We highlight what Mr. Paulo have said about a student who, according to Paulo, is more ‘delicate’: “He misses our class a lot, he leaves early, he arrives later, everybody likes making fun of him, teasing him, his parents once needed to come to school to deal with it” (Mr. Paulo). We also highlight what Ms. Verônica have said when, according to her, she asked one of the students to talk to and to change your behavior: “I told him, ‘you have to change your behavior… because you keep rolling” (Ms. Verônica). And we highlight as well what Mr. Paulo has said that, even though the school has a pedagogical coordination with a very iron fist, it is not possible to control the body and sexuality of students - for ‘inadequate’ behaviors come up all the time -, and this is a clue to how difference shows its singularity in this school’s space. Based on our theoretical perspective, ‘inadequate behaviors,’ - that is, ‘being delicate,’ ‘vulgar,’ ‘keep rolling,’ - can be assumed as practices of resistance to normalizing processes of the body and sexuality.

In ^{Foucault (1988}) we are reminded that in the last three centuries there was a ‘discursive explosion’ about sex. Differently to those who thought the 17^th century would represent the beginning of a repressive time against sexuality, ^{Foucault (1988}) points to a ‘discursive’ incitation’ over it. According to him, from the 18^th century on “[...] discourses about sex did not cease to proliferate” (^{Foucault, 1988}, p. 22). Since then, sexuality has been “[...] described, understood, explained, regulated, sanitized, educated, normatized from several perspectives and disciplinary fields, constituting itself in the midst of equally varied purposes and interests” (^{Louro, 2000}, p. 64). Sexuality has become a field of contention in which compete several institutions, as the state, the church, science - to mention the most ‘traditional’ ones - and, more recently, social movements, as the feminist and sexual ‘minorities’ movements, with discourses that, according to ^{Louro (2000}) are other discourses, with other notions and ethics.

However, even though there is a multiplicity of discourses on sexuality, we think with ^{Louro (2000}) there still is a hegemony of discourses that bears the force of ‘tradition’ and, because of that, they hardly are put into question. An appeal to a biologicist matrix is the hallmark of these discourses. Although other approaches about sexuality were already been proposed and have been showing the chance to think some issues regarding sexuality as part of cultural and social processes, we see the existence of a religious notion articulated with a biologicist, binary, sexist, moralist, heteronormative notion of sexuality, a notion that still is present in the school context and in society at large. We see it when Mr. Paulo says the ‘delicate’ student is subject for jokes in the school, or when Ms. Verônica reaches out to a religious Christian discourse to talk about men and women, saying “God has created man to be man, and woman to be a woman” (Ms. Verônica).

The practices of resistance these students develop in their school context in opposition to body’s and sexuality’s control and normalization - in this case, circumventing school time, dress and behave differently to the established norms - have built up other configurations of forces, other power relations. At the same time Mr. Paulo says he is not used to this ‘kind’ of behavior, he concedes that he needs to ‘adapt’, i.e., he agrees he needs to think other forms of dealing with his students.

From our viewpoint, not only the students’ ‘indiscipline’ might be seen as practices of resistance in the school context in which our study was held, but also the non-learning of the subjects inscribed in the school’s curriculum. Instead of thinking that there is “[...] a gap in learning … [that the students] don’t have future in life” (Mr. José), we tend to think these students’ actions are a form of resistance to learning universalized and validated school subjects as being the most important ones. This is what we are going to consider in the following lines.

Learning escape the control: students’ practices of resistance to curricula content standardization

According to ^{Gallo (2014}), modern education aims ‘to teach all to everyone’ - an idea coined by the educator and pedagogue from the 17^th century John Amos Comenius. In the context of that century and even today, it is believed that, if there are methods to achieve at a safe knowledge, then there must also be methods to teach rapidly and safer. ^{Gallo (2014}) says thinking about methods is extremely important, for it is the method that supports sameness and uniformity, it is the method that reduces our differences, it is the method that makes everyone needs to learn the same things at the same time. It is the method that allows us to know what to do, how to do, when to do, and therefore it is the method that allows us to control the processes of subjectivation, to control and normalize any and all deviation.

Yet, if one of the goals of the modern school and, in a sense, in contemporary times is to ‘teach all to everyone’, then at the same time, bearing in mind a homogenization of the processes of subjectivation through a universalized teaching, such goal rarely occurs as planned. Even in the face of external evaluations that rank education today, and demand pedagogical practices with the intention of making all the students have the same levels of knowledge and about the same things, many students do not learn what they were supposed to, but they learn other things.

So, what about those students that do not learn what they are supposed to, such as Mr. Paulo’s students? Mr. Paulo says: “I try to systematize, making it as easy as possible, every each it becomes more complicated to make these children absorb knowledge” (Mr. Paulo). He goes on:

It frustrates me a lot because sometimes, no matter how much you work, plan your classes, bring up topics, correct stuff, give tests, do our best, and even so it seems we are just doing what has to be done because nothing works, it is so frustrating (Mr. Paulo)

^{Gallo (2012}) reminds us that some studies in psychology of education have been building a certain meaning to the educational processes related to the idea of teaching and learning as inseparable notions as if the act of teaching naturally resulted in learning. According to these theories, it is only possible to learn what is taught, and one cannot learn without someone teaching, so that it is possible to control what, how and when one learns. These postulates coming from the psychology of education field still influences educational processes today. The educational processes is understood from a scientific perspective⁷ and gives the teacher the confidence on how to teach and evaluate students’ learning.

This way of doing things aims to control what people learn and homogenization of subjectivities, since its goal is that everybody learns the same things and the same way. The question remains: why students do not learn what they are supposed to?

In the work Difference and Repetition, ^{Deleuze (1988}) lead us to consider this issue when says that “We never know in advance how someone will learn: by means of what loves someone becomes good at Latin, what encounters make them a philosopher, or in what dictionaries they learn to think” (^{Deleuze, 1988}, p. 159); it shows us the learning’s unpredictability. Just how there is no more a method for learning, ^{Deleuze (1998}, p. 159) also says “[...] there is [not] a method for finding treasures [...]”, for learning “[...] follows the path of encounters and loves, not the methods of an always impotent pedagogy, out of the passions” (^{Schèrer, 2005}, p. 1191).

In this perspective, the act of learning is not mere recognition⁸ anymore - as it is in the Platonic philosophy - but an event, the creation of something new and unique in mind. As an event, the act of learning is shrouded in unpredictability, and this learning’s unpredictability “[...] throws away all pretension of modern pedagogy into being a science, the possibility of planning, controlling, measuring learning processes” (^{Gallo, 2012}, p. 4). Hence teachers’ hardships in making their students learn the topics taught the way they wish - no matter how they plan activities, tests, they never get to control what their students learn nor how it will happen.

Still, in this respect, ^{Deleuze (1972}) says the act of learning escapes of any control because this event happens out of an ‘encounter with signs.’ In Proust y los Signos, Deleuze’s (1972) emphasis is not on the act of learning as emission of signs, but on the act of learning as an encounter with the signs.

Learning is essentially concerned with signs. Signs are the object of a temporal apprenticeship, not of abstract knowledge. To learn is first of all to consider a substance, an object, a being as if it emitted signs to be deciphered, interpreted. There is no apprentice who is not ‘the Egyptologist’ of something. One becomes a carpenter only by becoming sensitive to the signs of wood, a physician by becoming sensitive to the signs of disease. Vocation is always predestination with regard to signs. Everything that teaches us something emits signs; every act of learning is an interpretation of signs or hieroglyphs (^{Deleuze, 1972}, p. 12).⁹

To learn, in the Deleuzian perspective, means to be in relation with signs, understand them as problems to be considered whose answer is never the same; on the contrary, it is always singular, innovative, unexpected. Every apprentice sets a specific relation with signs, reacts to them singularly, and produces in such a relation always something different. It means that each one learns in a certain way, and that is why to learn has to do with singularities. ^{Gallo (2012}, p. 8) says, “[...] in a same class, with a same teacher, multiple learning take place, since there are multiple students and each one learns in their own way”. It means that learning is not harmonically and orderly ‘mimicking,’ but grasp signs of things we are interested in and that mobilize us to action.

From this, we can say the education derived from documents and policies say what to teach, how to teach, why to teach, and to whom to teach, via curricular guidelines and references. On this subject, Mr. Paulo says, “[...] they say it is referential, but it is compulsory, you have to do what’s written there” (Mr. Paulo). According to ^{Gallo (2008}), the goals is to become a huge controlling machine, a students’ subjectivation machine, deciding which contents must be taught and learned in the school. On the other hand, the stronger the power relations in this context aim a certain homogenization, the more resistances will take place. ^{Foucault (1988}) says power relations generate resistances, and these attempts for control can, always, escape any control.

That is why, according to ^{Deleuze (1988}), that if learning is something that escapes control, for it has to do with unpredictability and event; if learning is placed beyond what we do in our classrooms; if learning imposes its heterogeneity and the establishment of differences; then, in the act of learning, a resistance is always possible. It is possible to resist - not to learn or learn in a different way standardized, universalized, formatted topics to meet hegemonic interests. We can say that Mr. Paulo’s, Mr. João’s and Ms. Laura’s students resist the learning of contents that, to a certain extent, prevent the manifestation of knowledge that comprises other interests, voices, cultures. We say it because, according to Mr. Paulo, Mr. João, and Ms. Laura, even though they work hard and get prepared to teach, they do not succeed in their initiatives.

In relation to content learning present in school’s curriculums, we highlight based on the observation conducted, some mechanisms of resistance found by one student at the moment when his teacher and the school’s pedagogical coordination were presenting him some rules to improve his performance in several subjects. When he was sent by his teacher to the pedagogical coordination’s room - in the presence of his mother -, due to delay in submitting his works on time e for not having good results in the tests, he sits before the coordinator, stares the wall beside him and agrees with everything. At first, we could say he was agreeing with all the coordinator’s demands, when his mother comments the following: “He always agrees like this, he does it at home too, but keep doing the same things, the way he does.”

The mother’s comment leads us to think that, even under the controlling and normalizing power devices in force at the school, movements of resistance take place in several forms. In the case of this student, it is possible to understand his ‘bad performance’ as a form of resistance to the learning of contents that do not regard, to a certain extent, the contexts in which schools are found and where students are constituted.

Instead of attributing the non-learning of contents present in the school’s curriculum by the students to some ‘learning disability’ (Mr. José), ‘lack of interest’ (Ms. Laura), ‘lack of discipline’ (Ms. Verônica), ‘lack of attention’ (Mr. Pedro), ‘destructured family’ (Ms. Isabel), ‘technological apparatus’ (Mr. João) - ideas still adopted by these professors -, we can also take these movements as resistances to “[...] very especial narratives on what constitutes a legitimate knowledge, what makes valid and legitimate forms of reasoning, on what reason is and what it is not, on which groups are legitimately able to reason or not” (^{Silva, 2012}, p. 190). Still, we can take these movements as forms of resistance to the curriculum inscribed knowledge and its way of transmission, as well as to power relations regulating, controlling, and governing the subjectivities.

To put it another way, these students’ resistances can also be seen as a way of questioning the current regulation regimes inscribed in the curriculum and as “[...] a possibility of challenging and modifying those power relations that tends to exclude a certain kind of knowledge and social groups, those that tend to stigmatize and undermine them” (^{Silva, 2012}, p. 196).

This leads us to think that difference is present, although the Western modern epistemology and its identity logics are constituted as a pedagogical device present in the school context that understands reality based on the concept of sameness, that leads everyone, regardless of their faith, social condition our cultural context, to learn the same things and to behave alike and adopt the same values. According to Mr. João, the students ‘question,’ ‘debate,’ ‘turn his routine complicated’, that is, they produce alternative spaces inside the school’s normalized and striated own space.

In this regard, we transcribe one of Mr. Paulo’s answer, in which he shows the need of creating negotiation spaces among teachers and students. In reference to external evaluations all students have to undergo, he says it is needed to negotiate it with students so they become studious and are able to perform well at school.

We work, encourages our students, […] there’s also an incentive […] for tests and grades. Students tend not to participate in one activity that does not represent any grade for their final evaluation; if it does not count for that end, then they don’t take it. So, we teachers end up encouraging them: “Look, when you get involved in these activities we’ll turn them into grades” (Mr. Paulo).

Resistances take place in the micro-political level and they question the macro-politics, as it is the case of Mr. Paulo’s students, who refuse to study those standardized topics aiming to perform well in large-scale tests unless they get in return ‘extra points’. It creates other spaces where other pedagogical practices can be considered. The fact that these teachers have to negotiate ‘grades’ with their students points out to the political ramification of an education in the micro level, setting “[...] trenches from which a daily-life and direct relations between persons politics is fomented, trenches, in their turn, exert effects over social macro-relations” (^{Gallo, 2008}, p. 68). In it we see small, daily things digging their own holes, contaminating spaces, eliciting resistances.

We want to say that the pretention of the education of the instituted policies, aiming to make all learn the same things the same way, manifests the students’ subjectivities homogenization will. If according to ^{Deleuze (1972}), teaching means the emission of signs without controlling what students will do when they find themselves with them, it would be better to give up this will of control over what students learn - although the pedagogical devices that lead us to this control - , and teach them as the one who “[...] sows seeds freely, hoping it may enable encounters, differences that may succeed in life, enchanting us with multiple creations that may come from them [...]” (^{Gallo, 2012}, p. 9), leaving aside the will that all behave the same way and do the same things. In this way, ‘anyone,’ and ‘in any way,’ can learn in our schools.

After all, says ^{Deleuze (1988}), learning is not acquiring or seize a knowledge, as in the Platonic recognition perspective. On the contrary, he says “To learn is but the intermediary between not-knowing and knowing, the living passage from one to the other” (Deleuze, 1988, p. 160). In this case, learning is less in the philosopher’s side of the cavern, which emphasizes the act of learning, and not the process, e more in the rat’s side in the labyrinth, which, even if it does not find the exit, it learns from its wanderings. And if what matters is the process, says ^{Gallo (2012}, p. 5), then “[...] it is better to live the event than to live what actually we get from such a passage.”

What school considers as ‘a gap in learning’ can also be taken as a practice of resistance in not knowing properly the topics inscribed in the curriculum. This is because students encounter with other signs and produce, through these encounters, other learning - learning that becomes significant in the ‘wanderings’ through their districts’ labyrinths, beliefs, social condition, culture, context; it is learning often silenced, invisible, turned inferior in this school’s context.

Final considerations

When we regard and problematize what school takes as unruly behavior and students ‘learning gap’, we see a chance of considering these movements, behaviors as practice of resistances against the effects of the power relations instituted in the school context, which, in a certain way, disregards specific contexts and singularities of each student. ^{Foucault (1988}) says that what enable spaces for resistances are the power relations themselves. So, it is not against the power these resistances are waged, but against their effects, and their creation and transformation potentiality is grounded on this fact.

That is why the practices of resistance in force in the school studied have such an extent; that is why they have this force of (dis)encounter with power relations that are instituted and to create “[...] fissures in the present [...]” and “[...] at the place of the fissure the line forms a Law, the center of the cyclone, where one can live and in fact where Life exists par excellence” (^{Deleuze, 2005}, p. 130). When these resistances fracture the present, they change the power relations and the course of things; they introduce a vacuum, or an indetermination in the very course of things and actions. That is why, for Deleuze (2005), when the power relations take life as an object, life becomes resistance to power relations. Life’s most intense point is, for Deleuze (2005) and ^{Foucault (2003}), in the encounter between the power relations and the practices of resistance.

In this sense, we regard the school context as a space of tension between forces, like a game of forces between power relations and practices of resistance. According to our analysis carried out in the present article, this space is characterized by the richness, creativity, and possibilities of change it offers. So, even though the school involved in the study is entangled in the modernity’s identity epistemology, that presents itself as being hegemonic in the said institution and, at large, in the society, these students find spaces for practices of resistance.

However, these practices of resistance do not intend to build a ‘new’ and ‘better’ epistemology, nor a ‘new’ and ‘better’ system based on reason, truth or humanity, for any epistemology or system like this, which aims at being hegemonic, will bring about exclusion and subalternization effects. In the context of school studied, these practices of resistance enable to contaminate, disturb, undermine the limits imposed by the power relations that are instituted, and mitigate several forms of violence. They also elicit ruptures and discontinuities there where continuous developments were found, and destabilize the current truth regime so that thinking is inserted in those fractured lines and make a difference. That is why the affirmation of the difference in this school is formed, according to ^{Foucault (2014}), in a permanent agonistic model, for, he says, the practices of resistance can undermine the limits that are established by power relations in force, but new limits always will arise