Based on institutional research, interested in investigate the relations between reading, writing and media, we focus in this text the contemporary experience on reading of young students of Secondary Education in public and private schools of the State of Rio de Janeiro, bringing into question the speech normally propagated by the school which represents them as non-readers. The theoretical and methodological support of the Cultural History and the Latin-American Studies allows perceiving that this diagnosis refers to their refusal of submitting themselves to the conception of reading maintained intact by school's illuminist tradition, which emphasizes the book as the sole reading support and the classics as the privileged mediators of reader's formation. The contact with students, either through observations, either in interviews and workshops, has allowed a surprising diagnosis. What we realized is that the daily contact, unceasingly intense, of young people with the mass media function, such as TV and film, as with the post-mass media function, such as internet and its various tools, such as blogs, orkut, msn, keeps them closer to the reading, although this approach occurs through preferences and practices different from those valued by school. This paper reflects on these findings, arguing that they could be relevant to the design of curricular policies and practices concerning to the reading of young students.
youth; contemporaneity; reading; writing