Challenges to Children’s Autonomy in a Brazilian State School Lucia Rabello de Castro ABSTRACT Children’s autonomy has stood as a main goal in the process of educational transmission understood as an increasing capacity on children’s part to share the normative encodings of social life supported by the self’s rational choice. This notion of autonomy leads to a reified view of human capacities over and above cultural and contextual particularities that, in fact, determine how subjects seek to understand norms in face of the ever changing demands of social life. Based on a one year long empirical research, using a variety of ethnographic approaches, this paper problematizes such a notion of autonomy and analyses how youth of a state school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, voice their demands and dissatisfactions and question the status quo. The preservation of the social imaginary of distinctiveness and past achievements of the school was found to hinder feelings and opinions of disapproval by students and devalue unanticipated and novel situations felt to be disruptive and menacing. Tensions in the school social dynamics were fuelled towards an arena over which the students could find no interference from teachers and could manage by themselves: that of peer relationships and friendships. BACKGROUND OF THE PRESENT RESEARCH For long my interest has focused on the issue of children’s participation in schools. The investigation I conducted in private and state schools in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, between 2006-10, provided interesting results (Castro & al., 2012). They pointed at a predominant view of students’ participation coalescing with their position as learners. Students viewed their participation as coinciding with teachers’ expectations towards them: dedication to the studies, obedience to norms, cooperation with the elders’ requests. Although this was found to be the hegemonic view, it did not contribute to a peaceful and harmonious school environment. Along with group discussions with children our research teamlistened to their grievances, frustrations and complaints about being unfairly treated and having to acquiesce to unreasonable demands. They questioned some of the rules they were constrained to obey as well as the crystallized The Oriental Anthropologist, Vol. 14, No. 2, 2014, Pages 237-250 © OICSR, Allahabad Corresponding Author E-mail :lrcastro@infolink.com.br *Address for Communication: *Research Centre for the Study of Contemporary Childhood and Youth, Institute of Psychology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.