This paper begins by historicizing certain issues that are put at stake in the extension of mandatory schooling in Argentina, as elaborated in the 2006 National Education Law which, in which from its extension to the end of secondary education it includes more actors and institutions. In order to accomplish this, laws and regulations are analyzed, as well as parliamentary debates and various documents. The second half of this paper accounts for the different circulating meanings regarding to the schooling of those who attend Secondary Level Educational Centers (students, teachers, directors). Since they did not tend to identify youths and adults as subjects of the regulation that establishes compulsory education, it is argued that historical configurations intervene in this stance, configurations that are linked to said command as well as to personal experiences. In this second half of the paper, the records of the ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two Secondary Level Educational Centers are analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]