Introduction
For most boys and girls in Latin America and the Caribbean, school represents the environment in which they spend the great majority of time in their everyday lives. The school’s general role is to educate, nourish and protect its students. In the region, however, schools are dramatically failing in this sense and violence plays an ominous
role in this context: The practice of corporal punishment is still present, as is emotional mistreatment and sexual abuse on the part of teachers, both male and female. There is also a growing tendency of peer harassment –
aggravated by the use of the Internet—and some studies carried out in the region’s countries tell of student aggression (especially male) against teachers and other education authorities. Parents have also been found to be involved in this type of violence.
