This paper discusses the forms through which the education participates in the processes of social differentiation and construction of identities. It was focused on the school experience and the social paths of a group of former students of three feminine confessional schools of São Paulo, who left school around 1960. The methodological procedures included questionnaires, semi-structured in-depth interviews with former students, directors and former teachers, consults to school files and ethnographic observations. The social origin of the families and of the nuns were linked to the characteristics of the students' academic formation and their ways of professionalization. The results suggest that the uses of private schools by the families in Brazil result in a homogeneous educational experience that potentializes the effects of the educational process on the modality of incorporation of class and gender stereotypes.
socialization; class; gender; social reproduction