The article presents several reflexions and investigations allowing us to clarify how the anthropological study of school life can be enriched by research on childhood. This research has captured the importance of relationships between students and their point of view concerning the school not only as a place to learn but also as a place to socialize. This article shows how childhood research equally borrows from sociology as anthropology, while specifying the contribution of latter ; with its concept of culture and the specific methodology of participant observation. More over, it is the specific approach of ethnology as a discipline which reflects on the “Other”, that helps research on school life. This approach presents children as a social and cultural group instead of only focusing on an “adultocentric” approach that reduces children to an age bracket.