Entre escolhas e escolas: quando a classe média decide ir para a escola pública

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to understand the school strategies of middle-class families, considering them to be part of a broader system of social reproduction strategies. More specifically, the paper investigates the processes of school choice inside the public school system for these families which, according to the literature, would be the most likely to invest heavily in their children’s schooling. This is a phenomenon insufficiently studied by the Sociology of Education in Brazil. In order to conduct the field research, based on the qualitative methodology, a case study was carried out with five families from different strata of the middle classes, living in Belo Horizonte and in nearby cities, whose children were enrolled in the public school system in the years of 2019, 2020 or 2021. The analysis of the cases allowed us to understand how the family’s educational strategies and choices were drawn, what was the decision-making space they actually had, what were the motivations for choosing the public school, and the expectations and fears arising from the schooling of their children in this school system.