“Somos tão jovens...”: o significado atribuído, pela juventude, aos processos de escolarização da EJA no município mineiro de Juiz de Fora

Abstract

The current dissertation aims at pondering about the meaning that youngsters attribute to the schooling processes of Education of Youths and Adults (EJA) in the city of Juiz de Fora today. In that regard, the following question arises: What are the perspectives and challenges to the schooling of the youth within EJA in Juiz de Fora? And so, it seeks: to identify the schooling processes of the youth in the referred municipality, considering the Brazilian position within the current conditions of Capitalism as well as to analyze the challenges and possibilities of these schooling processes in order to highlight some aspects towards a future project of education and society directed to the interests, paths and expectations of the working youth, unlike the current one. This study begins with a historical-dialectical materialistic approach, above all within the comprehension of school education as a reflection of the existing social-economic relations in Brazil, peripheral and obedient country to the great capital. As far as the methodological approach is concerned, a bibliographical, documental and empirical research was carried out based on a critical-analytical character of publications of books, articles and documents about the subject, as well as a socialhistorical qualitative-interpretative analysis, with interviews partially structured of students aged between fifteen and twenty-nine, attending classes on the aforementioned modality of teaching. At first, it sought to think about the relation between Capitalism, Education and Youth, presenting the meanings of schooling processes of the latter within the context of productive restructuring and work precariousness. Then, EJA was presented in the referred municipality, highlighting its path, the configuration of the educational system and the public effectively making use of it. In the third chapter, the current conceptions of youth were highlighted, as well as the analytical categories that were employed in this study. The fourth chapter brought the fieldwork with the results of the research carried out with the students. Finally, in order to conclude this study, a way to the Education of Youths and Adults is suggested, different from the model imposed by the power holders, seeking an education in which human beings and not profit is the priority.