This study discusses the tensions that mark the youth(s) of the 21st century and its (their) inter-relations with the school’s educational process. The main theoretical trends that focus on the concept of youth are resumed, analyzing the limitations of the approaches that consider it an idealized subject devoid of historic materiality. In demonstrating the breadth and delimiting the understanding of the category “youth,” the conditions and expectations concerning Middle School are discussed from the primary data collected, concluding with the analysis of the relations between school and work and the difficulties faced by youngsters in face of the school universe. Both the plurality that characterizes the condition of being young and the forms of manifestation of subjectivity project the dimensions of the challenge of understanding youth(s) today in its (their) dynamic relation with the school.
