This article offers to study certain aspects of the transmission of knowledge in the Brazilian state schools. Since the 1980s, the scholing system broadly opened to the most underprivileged coats of the urban populations, which caused heavy changes in the day-to-day behaviours. Faced with this new public, requirements in terms of discipline and dedication to studies considerably got weaker, as did the following of the official programs. Moreover, the teachers, overtired to compensate for the low wages, demonstrate an obvious tendency to depression. The pupils, in turn, get used to a tolerant institutional world which offers no more true break with their social world.
