3.1 Young people and school: the entanglement of a relationship built on the asymmetries of the system

The relationship between young people and school is a theme that has occupied research agendas, both in the governmental and academic spheres. Also for young people, the school experience and its implications for family life and the relationship with the world of work, leisure, and sociability do not go unnoticed.

The high dropout and retention rates and the intercurrences that prevent and/or hinder the continuity of studies mobilize public agendas at municipal, state, and federal levels. This is because the problem of access and permanence in secondary education is intertwined with high retention rates, which are already alarming in elementary education. Data from the 2020 School Census report an increase in age-grade distortion rates from the 3rd year onwards, which rises in the 7th year of elementary school and reaches a peak in the 1st year of high school (BRASIL, 2021).

The transition to the 6th year of elementary school and the 1st year of high school shows bleak numbers, if we compare our evaluation of educational policies with policies in the field of health, economy, or even public safety. The age-grade distortion rates recorded in the 2020 School Census result in 22.7% in final years and 26.2% in secondary education (BRASIL, 2021). The age-grade distortion among male students is greater than that of female students at all stages of education. The greatest difference between genders is observed in the 6th year of elementary school, where the age-grade distortion rate is 28.2% for males and 16.8% for females.

Source: Board of Educational Studies at INEP (BRASIL, 2020).

Figure 1 Age/grade distortion 

Not by chance, ^{Peregrino (2010}) draws attention to the second segment of elementary school, the stage in which school inequalities deepen, in a scene that is repeated and that announces the survivors of high school: poor young people, condemned to a process of unschooling or, as ^{Bourdieu and Champagne (1998}) would say, condemned to assume the role of “excluded from the countryside” in Brazilian public schools. It must be considered that these data have other nuances in addition to dropout rates, retention rates, and age-grade distortion rates.

School inequalities in Brazil are limited to several axes of power, and this complexity evokes the concept of intersectionality (^{CRENSHAW, 2002}). Class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ableism, age, and territory constitute, paraphrasing the author, the avenues that structure the social, economic, and political terrains of what we call retention, age-grade distortion, and school dropout in the Brazilian educational system.

The data presented do not disregard the commitment of Brazilian society which, in the last decade, has significantly increased the net school rate among students aged 15 to 17 years and enabled an evolution in the average rate of years of study (^{CORREA et al., 2017}). The expansion of secondary education brought young people from social strata previously excluded from formal schooling processes to school and represented a significant improvement in access to education for the Brazilian population. However, access and expansion of enrollments were still not enough to reverse the problem of permanence and quality.

Among the young people in our research, an insignificant number had interrupted their studies, but about 24.7% had already failed. Among the young people interviewed, 28.4% had failed in the early years of elementary school, 39.4% in the final years, and 35% in high school, a stage that was still ongoing for just over half of the respondents.

The document prepared by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF, 2019) presents the same data from the School Census (BRASIL, 2021), shown in Figure 1, broken down based on race, ethnicity, gender, and territory markers. The highest probability of failure is concentrated in students who are male, black, quilombola, indigenous, with disabilities, and who live in the North and Northeast regions of the country. These are poor students, mostly from public schools, those most affected by school inequalities.

If we can say that today we are experiencing a crisis of institutions, including schools, the question we must ask ourselves is: to what extent does the expansion of public schools to poor students, an expansion that is at the same time slow and degraded, makes it increasingly more “inhabited” and less “experienced” (as an institution) by its users, does it not discredit it as a possible space for building youth sociability and projects for the future? (^{PEREGRINO, 2010}).

I wonder if that's it... That's where uncertainty comes in. ' Is this really what I want for my life?'. I don't know if it's just me, but when I started high school, one of the first things that came to my mind was: now that I'm becoming an adult, I'm going to start making my own choices and that's when I really have to take courses that will benefit me in things I want to pursue, so... But that's the question that drives me crazy, I think all young people think: 'What do I want to do?'. (Student, focus group at school C).

The doubts and questions expressed in the statement above denote that indetermination in the youth experience is even harder for young people who live in situations of material precariousness. The young people analyzed here experience a path of uncertainty: when they reach high school, they do so under the sign of vulnerability, as they reconcile study and work, and live in the present without being able to plan the future. Also, for them, the future constitutes the space of possible becoming (^{LECCARDI, 2005}), but the absence of cultural, social, and economic resources prevents them from developing cognitive strategies of control over at that time of their lives. In the absence of support to build their autonomy, temporal acceleration is yet another source of social exclusion: “Everything changes. Until the start of high school, you are sure of everything; by the 2nd already comes the doubt; in the 3rd, you don't know anymore” (Student, focus group at school C).

When they reach high school, their relationship with the school starts to have other affectations. We highlight the world of work as a fundamental socialization dimension of youth life. Brazilian youth is marked by great diversity in terms of work experiences and their relationship with schooling. In this sense, the process of entering the labor market and work experiences are intertwined in their personal and school trajectories and the outlining of life projects.

3.2 Young people at the intersection between school and the world of work

For young people, work does not have a single meaning. It is an intersection between necessity and possibility, between obligation and the desire for personal fulfillment. In this respect, for some, work appears as an experience concomitant with studies or even driven by schooling; for others, as a way of being young and a way of being someone in life. Among the young people surveyed who were working, 85.5% said that work had implications for their plans for the future.

Although our research covered the inclusion of young people in multiple socialization processes, we chose to address in this article the interrelationships between student experiences in the world of work, connected to the school context, as we understand that both have a great impact, from a very early age, in the youths lives and are, therefore, socializing instances that “make youths”.

When examining data from the Brazilian Youth Profile survey, ^{Guimarães (2005}) asserts that work is a theme that is on the agenda for young Brazilians, it has multiple meanings and appears, for young people, as a value, a need, and a right. To understand the relationship between youth and work, it is important to outline that the theoretical construct “youth” is not univocal and that work as a specific field has its own rules for age or generational cuts. Guimarães (2005) points out that, in the labor market, there are different forms of professional socialization of young people who, due to their distinct feeling of belonging, build different perceptions, representations, aspirations, and interests.

The centrality of work in the youth imagination and its subjective meaning is not a coincidence. A significant portion of young people have their experiences referenced in the world of work and the first evidence is that this insertion is impacted by demographic dynamics and its determinants. A second piece of evidence in this context comprises the relationship between schooling and job opportunities, which leads us to an analysis of the patterns of inclusion and exclusion in the Brazilian school system. The third piece of evidence concerns the forms of youth entry into the labor market: informal intermediation mechanisms, intense transitions, and precarious working conditions do not diminish their meaning and importance for the youth social experience.

In recent works by ^{Corrochano, H. Abramo, and L. Abramo (2017}), we glimpse an attempt to escape the false duality built around the relationship of young people and the world of work, concomitantly with schooling. “An empty head is the devil's workshop” or “studying to be someone in life” are the old saying and the old jargon that in no way explain youth work experiences.

The relationships that young people establish with these two socializing instances are different, therefore it is not the postponement of the entry into the world of work that will solve the serious educational problems and, consequently, improve the conditions of labor insertion, nor is inactivity a serious problem of poor young people that needs to be equated with labor insertion.

It was only in recent decades that the understanding of work as a constitutive dimension of youth life began to reverberate in public policies aimed at youth. The incorporation of youth demands into the government agenda occurred in the wake of the construction of the National Agenda for Decent Work (ANTD) and the National Plan for Employment and Decent Work (PNETD).

The mobilization for the construction of a National Agenda for Decent Work for Youth (ANTDJ) brought together a group representing different levels of government, business confederations, trade union centrals, the National Youth Council (Conjuve), and the National Youth Council (Conanda). Researchers from the field of Youth and Sociology of Work joined this group, who, through studies and research, expanded the debate on the themes and presented demands that were invisible in the social scene.

Recognize and promote the right to work, examine the conditions in which young people enter the labor market to understand the extent to which the work conditions interfere with schooling, family life, leisure time, the meanings that work acquires for the acquisition of autonomy, and social inclusion are some of the issues that permeated the definition of priorities at ANTDJ.

In the testimonies of young people, job satisfaction invariably appears, adding to frustration and anguish due to the difficulties in reconciling school and work. In another dimension, however, work is seen as an expansion of the field of possibilities, of perspectives for the future.

I had some options until I started working, then I started to see other areas, in which I started to be more interested, but the most I wanted to do was Civil Engineering, then I was going to take a technical course to be able to join college already knowing what will more or less happen within the area. Kinda confusing... Because then I have this desire to do Civil Engineering, but I'm working in an environmental company, then I start to be interested in other areas related to the environment, like Biology, Environmental Engineering. (Student, focus group at school C).

When asked if work harmed school performance, 24% answered yes. Of these, 56.4% attributed this impairment to fatigue and 29.7% to lack of time to study. And the vast majority of students surveyed? Why don't they see the harm in reconciling school and work? The answers can come from several factors, and this stems from the fact that the overlap of these two activities does not occur for all young people. The age at which they start working, the time of their schooling, the type of work, and family conditions are some of the nuances that unite and separate young people when it comes to work. There are those cases in which there is respect for student-worker conditions in such a way that working hours are flexible due to the school calendar.

Mediator: How is that? How do you do both?

Student: In the rush, right? Because I get to work at half past two in the afternoon, then everything is in a rush. Home life is put to the side, only on the weekend. (School A focus group).

Among the topics still little discussed, ^{Corrochano, H. Abramo, and L. Abramo (2017}) highlight the unpaid domestic work that young women generally do. For many of them, motherhood is an obstacle to the continuity of their studies, as the lack of public care services and equipment prevents them from dedicating themselves to their studies. Problems related to urban mobility also appear to young people as an obstacle in reconciling work and studies: “I helped my father because I bought my things and he didn’t have to pay!” (Student, focus group at school B).

The troubled family relationships and domestic violence are also factors that accelerate the decision to work:

Student: I work because, because I always have, my main objective was to leave home. My life at home was hell, not only because of fights, but because of much more serious problems that I can even talk about, today it doesn't bother me anymore, but the social issue was very uncomfortable, it was very uncomfortable, and then I needed to get out of the house. I've always worked intending to leave home and it's been more than a year since I've lived alone. Today I live with my fiance, in fact, but it's, let's say, to have what I wanted, inside my house. I had a stepfather who abused me, a mother who pretended not to notice, a religious mother - I don't believe in God - and that's how it was: there was chaos, so I left home. I worked so I could leave the house.

Mediator: How old are you?

Student: 17. (Focus group from school A).

Reconciling study, work, and other demands of youth experience, such as family life, culture, and leisure, is an arduous task for young people. Long working hours, precarious work conditions, and school hours, sometimes long and almost no flexibility, affect youth life.

Failure to comply with labor legislation and regulations defined in the Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescentes are issues on which the Subcommittee made little progress, as stated by ^{Corrochano, H. Abramo, and L. Abramo (2017}). If this theme, which strongly affects youth school trajectories, due to its varied nuances, was not reached by consensus, the issue of double and triple working hours associated with domestic work and family responsibilities for young mothers and young fathers generated an intense debate about the permanence of the sexual division of domestic work and the gender effects that prevent young mothers from continuing or resuming their studies.

Finally, the issue of professional qualification of young people who are or who wish to enter the world of work highlights a set of public policies that, in the form of programs and projects, are proposed to raise schooling and stimulate professional qualification to mitigate the problems of unemployment and precariousness (informality) and the difficulties of insertion and permanence in work. Low schooling, poor quality of education, and little or no professional qualification are, for employers, the biggest obstacles to the insertion and permanence of young people in the labor market. With this in view, REM was instituted.

3.3 And REM, what does it have to do with it?

I, to be honest, I chose to study Tourism, because it was the only one - how do you say it? -, the only course that had empty spots, and then, like, you were going to go through a lottery, and we concluded with the vice-principal that if we, I plus - I think - five friends, if we chose Tourism so there would be no confusion, not having to do this whole lottery, and we could all be together. And that's why I chose Tourism, it wasn't because I wanted to do Tourism, no. (Student, focus group at school A).

The above excerpt concerns one of the issues most reiterated by young people when they talk about REM. Unlike the young students whose schools participated in the first phase of the program's implementation, the young people who joined in the following year - the expansion phase - could not choose the areas of employability they wanted to study, nor was there an offer of 18 areas, such as appears in the official document. If, in the first phase of the program, there was an investment in financial resources, human resources, infrastructure, and equipment, in the later phases, students and managers felt completely helpless.

The implementation of REM in the 33 schools surveyed caused significant changes not only in the students' routine but in the teachers' work and functional routine, although a gradual implementation was intended. In our research, we heard reports from young people who emphasized the potential of a proposal that brought a certain convergence with their demands and interests and pointed to their present and future projects:

I think it's irrelevant, useless, meaningless, and a hell of a lot to do, because if you want to reinvent high school, it's like I said, the laptop issue, that would reinvent it much better, in a much more efficient, in addition to that we have one, an English class too that I don't know what it's for. Want to reinvent high school? Reinvent, put a teacher from a course to teach English [...]. (Student, focus group at school D).

In a context of accentuated fragility, REM, daily and operationally, translated into yet another promise. An ill-fated promise to reconcile the world of school and the world of work and still respond to the challenges of the contemporary world. In the following report, the student's criticism goes into two dimensions:

The problem with education is that, as it is in the long term, in Brazil, politics, involves a lot, because, when Reinventando o Ensino Médio started, it was party X that was in government and, when it ended, it was the Y party that was in the office, and they didn't have a similar ideology. So, it turns out, instead of joining forces to build something good, it's a partisan dispute, right? (Student, focus group at school A).

Although this last excerpt explains a belief in the potential of REM, one can see, in this excerpt, an indisputable criticism directed at the implementation of the policy that, despite the multiple issues that intersect the condition of young people in their relationship with the school, makes it unfeasible significant educational relationships and reinforces the legitimacy crisis experienced by educational institutions (^{DUARTE et al., 2020}). Policies that, like other historically known ones, are implemented under the understanding that it is necessary to raise the proficiency/performance indexes of our high school students or under the pretext of qualifying them for the job market.

From another point of view, this same youngster unveils the problems of discontinuity of public policies, which, in the case of REM, became extinct ignoring the impacts of this interruption on life projects and on the schooling processes of the subjects for whom it was intended. In a lucid reading of the need for a time frame that exceeds the times of political mandates, this same person tells us that: “Education is long term, it is no use wanting to do it today and have an answer tomorrow”.

In this way, the REM implementation process showed that, between the ideal of an educational policy and the reality of schools and their subjects, there is a long distance. According to ^{Laval (2019}, p. 19):

[...] the reformist drive in schools presents its intentions in diffuse ways, by combining, in the discourse, the prerogatives of a republican school, which should form citizens and, at the same time, a school concerned with producing 'human capital', using the techniques and the best ethical intentions.