Juventudes e escolarização: o ensino médio e o desafio da formação crítica de jovens pertencentes a comunidades empobrecidas

Abstract

This research aimed to investigate how high school can contribute to the critical and active formation of young people who attend the educational space and who experience their precarious youth condition. The research subjects were young people who attend the school environment in the daytime high school, with socio-historical inscription locating them in poor and peripheral territories. The methodological proposal chosen was the qualitative research of the participant type, which was based on the following strategies: participant observation, semi-structured interviews, workshops with students and bibliographical and documentary research. The activities were held at a High School Center in the Santa Maria Administrative Region, Federal District. The procedures of data analysis were made through triangulation of methods, that is, based on the adoption of a reflexive-conceptual and practical behavior of the research object from different perspectives. From a theoretical point of view, the study was supported by Marxist-inspired authors, considering youth as a socio-historical and cultural category, thus addressing the condition of poor youth as a stratum of social relations producing violation of rights in society ruled by capital. Regarding the school, the research focused on the weaknesses of high school as a stage of basic education, which has been historically marked by the formative duality, structurally engendered within the education system in Brazil, organized to effectively meet the interests of hegemonic class that historically dominates social relations. From the point of view of critical formation, we sought to fit in with the propositions of a transformative, democratic education in which everyone is called to participate; an education based on free and rational men and women, capable of promoting change through historical and cultural transformations and leading to the practice of freedom. It was concluded that, given the objective conditions of poor youth, it is necessary to provide, at school, spaces for democratic listening where young people can exercise the right to pronounce their word.