Published for the first time more than two decades ago, A produção do fracasso escolar, by Maria Helena Souza Patto, continues to be a reference work for researchers in education, and teachers. How can one explain its longevity and fecundity in a field that is so marked by rapid obsolescence of authors, theories and educational perspectives? In this article, we present two complementary hypotheses for this solid trajectory of her work. The first one concerns the elucidative potential of her research that refuses the jargon and the procedures that erase the concreteness of the real in favor of a mathematized language and standardizes concepts; what, then, emerges is a complex picture of everyday life in a singular educational institution. On the other hand, in her researches the peculiarity of everyday life of an institution is not taken apart from the historical, political and social conditions which have marked the conceptions and educational practices in our society.
School failure; Educational psychology; Teachers; Schools