Based on the thinking of Antonio Gramsci, this article aims to reflect the economic, political and social role of the Youth and Adult Education (EJA) in the context of flexibilization in Brazil, a product of the transformations that occurred in the world of the production and of the work in the last decades. For that, it discusses the ethical and political direction of the EJA in the context of the dual structure of the teaching and of the Brazilian education reform, that happened in the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, for soon afterwards, and opposing this proposal, to present the conception of EJA in the perspective of the human formation, integral and beyond of the interests of the market and the capital. These are reflections based on data from the survey conducted on 2017, wich counted on the 8 teachers' participation and 67 students from two schools belonging to the Youth and Adult Education Program of the the municipal network of Rio de Janeiro. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]