“Getting on with the Other”: Violence and Everyday School Life in the Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires

The return to in-person classes after the COVID-19 pandemic revealed an increase in physical violence among students of secondary school. This article examines the role of the school as a setting that enables students to learn how to coexist with others. Based on an educational qualitative research study conducted in two state-run schools in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, located in urban poverty contexts, it investigates the effects of COVID-19-induced isolation on school coexistence. The fieldwork involved participant observation, interviews, and analysis of student productions during school workshops. Students and teachers were selected through purposive sampling. The working hypothesis posits that learning to coexist involves not only dealing with conflicting situations but also the need to verbalize them, a practice that schools actively foster. The findings show that, by providing a place where time and space are shared, the school acts as a key mediator, where students’ physical and verbal interactions become essential to reconfiguring relationships among classmates. The study concludes that the school plays a decisive role in transforming conflict into voiced experience, replacing physical aggression with meaningful narratives.