Abstract
This study aimed to investigate the arrival of private schools in a district in the east side of Sao Paulo and it is based on secondary treatment of statistical data, questionnaires applied in public and private schools, and interviews with parents, teachers, and youngsters in the district. The initial hypothesis proposed that the modification on local school offer would reveal the process of internal differentiation of low-income groups, derived from the increase of income on the base of Brazilian social pyramid during Lula’s government. The results of the statistical study allowed us to propose a typology of subprefectures according to school offer. The interviews revealed a slow process of cultural capital accumulation and lifestyle modifications, connected to the university diplomas owned by the second generation of interviewed families. This fraction of low-income classes, in which cultural capital is higher, essentially composes the demand for private education in the district. On the particular case of this district, the article approaches the characteristics of offer and educational strategies identified in this reduced group of families, a process connected to the acquisition of cultural capital during two generations, as well as to women’s work.
Private school; Educational inequalities; Cultural capital; Educational strategies; Sociology of education