Jovens e adolescentes no ensino médio: sintomas de uma sistemática desvalorização das culturas juvenis

Abstract

This research, linked to the Research Line Education, Politics and Culture of PPGE/UFSM, aims to reflect deeper upon the contemporaneous discussion about the relation between youth cultures and high school, having as starting point the analysis of meaning constructions of young students who are enrolled in the third year of high school of two schools in Santa Maria, one public state school and other private. Identification of the subjective meanings of these students was pursued, investigating their perceptions about school environment, relationship with teachers, and about young students in Santa Maria. Focal groups were used as method, considering a qualitative approach to educational research, aiming to depict the youth speeches in a collective way, as close as possible from their usual way of communicating with classmates and friends. Through content analysis, we pointed out emerging categories on the speeches. This resource allowed a better understanding about meaning construction of high school youth in Santa Maria. The theoretical reference used considered several authors who produce knowledge about contemporaneous youth and adolescents, such as researchers from the social psychology field, social sciences, social anthropology, education and psychoanalysis. Concerning this issue, we chose a multidisciplinary comprehension of Brazilian youth cultures constitution, aiming to consider the psychological and social, global and local contingencies about the production of a youth subjectivity present on school contexts. After data analysis, a school monoculturalism was identified, oriented towards achievement, that prescribes only the adherence to school procedures dictated by the selective processes regarding enrollment in undergraduate studies pursued by Universidade Federal de Santa Maria. Moreover, data analysis allowed the perception of the consolidation of a youth subculture centered in a form of adherence to teaching that considers only its use. This context of learning is constantly reinforced by teachers and scholar agents and operates a systematic exclusion of other youth cultures of schools in Santa Maria. We conclude the research, emphasizing the educational consequences of an impoverishing logic of high school teaching, that negatively marks the profiles of youth identities of subjects who move away from attempts to impose meanings pursued by teachers in classrooms.