This essay reveals that to face the structural crisis of employment and of work conditions, youths have participated in the movement for a solidary popular economy. In order to discuss about education for these young people that have associated themselves to guarantee an enlarged reproduction of life, we haveconsidered in an articulated way some concepts as follows: youth, associativity, associated production, culture of work and self-management. Along the article, references are made to associative economical organizations, established and driven by youths, whose economical rationality, unlike the so-called "empreendedorismo", differs from the logic of capitalist economy. It is emphasized that in order to problematize work one has to problematize the current and future relations between school and society; and, also, to re-signify work for youth is, simultaneously, re-signifying the meaning of school as social institution as well as the way it is perceived by the very youths who are struggling to work in an associative and self-managed form.