“Should I be on this course?”: on public school students in high social selectivity courses

Abstract

The article aims critically understanding aspects of the family and school trajectory of students from public schools, approved in courses of high social selectivity at a public university, addressing mainly the ‘struggle’ for permanence in higher education. The exploratory and descriptive study, based on Bourdieu’s ideas and the notion of “social boundaries” of Lamon and Molnár (2002), of case studies (TRIVINÕS, 1987) and interviews with medical and law students, concluded: the permanence of students admitted through quotas in higher education is a continuum of what had been the struggle for access; the daily and academic needs of those students contribute to forging their moral virtues; the students face “sweet violence” (BOURDIEU, 2010), sometimes disguised or not, in the symbolic and material boundaries of social distinction in the academic field, which can lead them to self-exclusion. A public system of higher education cannot be democratic if it consists of a few ‘hero’ students from public schools who achieve success through their admittance in courses of high social selectivity, when they are mobilized for not doubting their own dreams. Among the topics for further study and research, one find: social quotas in relation to the process of participation of military school students and the convergence or variations of needs and virtues in the middle-class and low-income class in courses of high social selectivity.