The paper presents the results of a research, entitled "Education and social exclusion - the sacred under threat", which seeks to identify factors influencing the construction of a more or less favourable value appreciation of school. The main hypothesis of the investigation is that the meaning of the school space is weakening, for some social sectors long exposed to a process of reduction of opportunities for ascendant social mobility through the distinctive channels of modern societies. A brief report of the research focusing on students from Rio de Janeiro is presented, as well as its methodology - which involves focus groups and a survey -, and a literature review related to the issue. The systematised data tend to strengthen the main hypothesis: the school seems to be a dubious and questionable element for the most excluded segment of the students researched. Nevertheless, there are circumstances that confuse this picture, accentuating the school experience as a central aspect of the value attributed by students to school and, in a way, counterbalancing the disruptive effects of an economic framework of deep social conflicts associated with patterns of extreme and long-lasting social inequality.
sociology of education; social value of education; youth and education; social exclusion; social sacred