Por que ir à escola? O que dizem os jovens do ensino médio

Abstract

The present study leaned on the theme of school in interface with youth, in the city of São Carlos, São Paulo. The general aim was to analyze and comprehend the meaning of school for young people enrolled in the senior year of High School, by giving priority to their views about the school institution. Besides factors such as lack of interest, violence, indiscipline, and lack of incentive to study, it is observed that many young people in Brazil especially those coming from the lower classes evade the institutions during their school career. Nevertheless, there are those who stay at school, satisfied or not, with or without difficulties, and this work is an attempt to understand the peculiarities and meanings of this permanence. For that, first it resorted the use of a questionnaire with closed-ended questions to an universe of 861 young people enrolled in the senior year of High School from 13 public institutions and 6 private schools on the referred town, to obtain data on excerpts from the students school career, the meanings of school and how formal education is constituted for them, in the pursuit to include young people with several life paths, social and economic situations. Afterwards, two meetings were performed and denominated group talk with five students who made themselves available to participate, among those who answered the questionnaire, aiming to make a reflection about the theme taking by reference a general presentation of the collected data and the statistic results. The empirical results were analyzed from the description, composition and comparison of the collected information with the young people, based on the scientific references of Education, Sociology and Social Occupational Therapy, which parameterizes the debate around this problem set. The results reveal that the trajectories of the young participants are linear, with few oscillations in their school careers. When taking position about the role and the meanings of the school institution, they reflect significantly what the society projects on school: the responsibility for a job training or for higher education, depending on the social class of the student. The criticism, the dissatisfaction and the attribution of widest meanings appear on the group talk, engendering also an individual reflection that stands out, given the scenario seen from another angle; the school for the youngsters is the same but it could be another. In the pursuit for understanding what those who remained until the last year of High School have to say, it is expected to provide references for strategies to deal with the issue regarding the possible meanings of school today, taking the young people as the center of those possibilities.