Secondary education: two populations, two schools (I)

Abstract

Within the scope of an exploratory study, based on a sociological inquiry, one presents this first article now, the object of which is the social characteristics of the pupils of the secondary modern schools and technical schools in Portugal. One considered to be useful its publication as an independent work, given the almost complete ignorance of the comparative social characteristics of the Portuguese populations of the secondary modern schools and technical schools, translated into verifiable quantitative data. Besides, on publishing as an independent text the analysis of the social characteristics of the school populations in those two kinds of education, a change ocurred in the statute with which the set of the used variables presents itself in the first part of the study, to be published later. There the characterization of the social conditions operates like an independent variables, while it is the analysis object itself in the present article. Thus what concerns us here it is to describe/compare the structures of the inquired populations as to the different used indicators. The main indicator for establishing the social origins of pupils is that of the social professional categories of their fathers. Identical data are given as to their mothers and grand-fathers (paternal and maternal). The father's, mother's and grand-fathers' education levels are another set of indicators for the observation of the cultural conditions concerning the pupils' existence. Since one of the important factors in the definition of the «choices» in the schooling road is the mother's education level, one also makes such an analysis according to the collected data. The elements concerning brothers and sisters show another dimension of social characterization of the inquired populations. Through the father's stratum one may remark the number of brothers and sisters, the age composition of the group of brothers and sisters, their education levels, their school situation, their social-professional strata. Through these indicators not only one may characterize the inquired populations but also one may determine how much class character the school assumes in their two roads of secondary level, by means of the observation of the social differences in the recruitment of their learning populations.