Quanto vale o sucesso? opressão e resistência entre jovens estudantes de um Instituto Federal no sertão nordestino

Abstract

In Brazil, since the 1990s, the number of studies on cases ideologically referred to as school success or achievement among the working classes has increased, accompanying significant transformations in the Brazilian educational landscape. These cases are usually read through a meritocratic lens—an approach we seek to confront, strongly inspired by Maria Helena Souza Patto’s work on the production of school failure. To this end, we conducted a qualitative study in education, interviewing eight students from the integrated high school program at a Federal Institute (IF) in the northeastern hinterland, intersecting markers of class, race, gender, and sexuality. IFs are generally regarded as schools of excellence, whose access is highly contested among working-class youth, who have the opportunity to pursue technical education integrated with secondary schooling. However, their admission is often ideologically taken as synonymous with success—a view we intend to challenge by identifying the contradictions that shape students’ experiences, dialectically crossed by oppression and resistance. Our main objective was to critically analyze the school experience from the perspective of integrated high school students at IFSertãoPE in relation to school success; and the specific objectives were: (1) to develop a critical analysis of the dominant explanations regarding so-called school success among the working classes and its political role in justifying the ideology of merit; (2) to understand school life from the perspective of integrated high school students at IFSertãoPE based on the markers of race, class, and gender; (3) to examine how the ideology of merit operates in the students’ daily school experience. The results highlight the contradictions running through these students’ school life, marked by both oppression and resistance, namely: (1) difficulties in access and retention, which call into question the ideal of success; (2) challenges faced during the pandemic and their effects on schooling, especially for poor and Black students; and (3) strategies of individual and collective resistance. The study shows how the ideology of merit is embedded in everyday school life, shaping perceptions of success and failure and influencing school dynamics. It also underscores the importance of viewing the trajectories of poor and Black students not as exceptions or unlikely cases, but as agents who, though oppressed, resist and re-signify the school space. We recommend further research in the field from a critical perspective that takes into account the intersections of race, class, gender, territory, ethnicity, among others. Finally, we hope this work may inspire pedagogical, political, and institutional actions that strengthen mechanisms of school inclusion and the right to public, free, democratic, secular, and socially referenced quality education for all.