Resumo

ERRANDONEA, Gabriel. Education and inequality: Educating all or selecting the best?. InterCambios [online]. 2025, vol.12, n.1, e212.  Epub 01-Dez-2025. ISSN 2301-0118.  https://doi.org/10.29156/inter.12.12.

This article analyzes the contradiction between the promise of universality and the selective practice that characterizes secondary education in Uruguay, a process that contributes to the persistence of social inequalities. To this end, it reviews conceptual frameworks that help to understand the relationship between institutions and educational trajectories: the notion of agency applied to educational dispositifs, the dimension of life time and the compensatory advantage in educational decisions, the idea of structural mismatch, and the concept of systemic code as a mechanism of inclusion and exclusion. Building on these contributions, the article seeks to: (i) examine how institutional structures condition trajectories and opportunities, (ii) analyze the differential effects of time and social origin on educational experiences, and (iii) discuss the codes of selection that traverse the system. It concludes that the latent function of secondary education is social selection rather than integration, which calls for a redefinition of its aims and the reconfiguration of its dispositifs toward an inclusive horizon.

Palavras-chave : educational inequality; secondary education; educational trajectories; systemic codes; democratization of education.

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