The demand for good manners at secondary school

Abstract

This article focus on the perceptions that young students from socially disadvantaged sectors assign to respect and disrespect practices at school. From a qualitative design, this investigation analyses the results of a survey made to three hundred students of a public secondary school, located in the suburbs of the city of Posadas, Argentina. The analyses show that students confer great significance to good manners. We read their answers as expressions of social behavior codes that show an explicit request of individualized acknowledgment that sets in the first place the relational character that the respect feeling or its flip side acquire.