Por que ir à Escola? Os sentidos atribuídos pelos jovens do ensino médio.

This paper results from a research aimed at analyzing the meanings assigned by Secondary Education senior year students to school, in an attempt to understand the peculiarities and purposes of their permanence in Basic Education. To this end, a questionnaire was filled in by students of public and private schools in 2013 in São Carlos, São Paulo (Brazil). Afterwards, meetings entitled as collective talks were performed with one group of these students in order to produce a reflection based on the results gathered from the questionnaires. When giving their opinion, the students revealed positive meanings and motivated attitudes towards the school. Nevertheless, they pointed out the shortcomings of school without diminishing its value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]