Young people and sport in Community Education Centers’ public policy

Abstract

Community Education Centers, a CETP’s (Council of Technical Professional Education) public program, are implemented in places of a socioeconomic context corresponding to the first and second income quintile. CECs were designed for young people who, after finishing primary school, were not able to access secondary education, to bring them closer to the traditional education system.  This paper analyses how this public policy builds youth and understands young people, in dialogue with the conceptualizations of sport as a social and cultural phenomenon, making it possible to discuss the view of this public policy and to what extent it collaborates with or feeds back into the representations and meanings given to sport in the CECs. Youth is understood as a social construction from which, in this case, public policies and their implementation are conceived. This paper focusses on the importance of establishing the view on young people both from the perspective of official documents as well as from the CECs actors.