Since the middle of the 19th century, school institutions around the world have taken on an expansion process, thus consolidating the so-called mass school. There is certainly a common discourse that education has a fundamental role in the lives of individuals and in the construction of a more just and democratic society. Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, developed analysis of how the school operates in its interior, seeking to understand the mechanisms that the school institution uses so that the promise of ascension -from its own effort and intelligence -does not become universal. The central argument that guides Bourdieu's perception about the difficulties of some children in advancing their school career, is presented in the idea of cultural capital. The possession of a cultural capital recognized by the school would favor school performance as far as it would facilitate the learning of school contents and codes. This work sought to understand the relations between assessment, teaching and learning, in the context of high school in a state public school in São Paulo, taking into account the representations of students and teachers in the light of Pierre Bourdieu's productions. For this, the investigation used different research sources: classroom observations, questionnaires and interviews. Students were grouped according to their successes or failures in their school trajectories and information about cultural capital, and representations about assessment, teaching and learning -obtained through questionnaires and interviewswere related. The analyzes made it possible to perceive that students who have a cultural capital closer to that which the school institution considers legitimate had a greater understanding of the evaluation criteria carried out by their teachers, a greater understanding of the objectives and organization of the teaching plans, and conceptions about the evaluation process that covers other dimensions that surpass the tests answered at the end of a pedagogical treatment, for example. This type of cultural and social reproduction operated by the school that is based on the requirement of prior capital directly reflects on the students' learning processes and on the teachers' appraisals, and is clearly observed in different speeches of the interviewed students. For Bourdieu, the school system assumes exclusion practices with a mild character, that is, they are imperceptible, gradual, and subtle, both for those who exercise them and for those who are their victims. Although the research does not present the true Heirs portrayed by Bourdieu in his productions, there is here the intention to demonstrate how the imaginary and belief in the conquest of cultural heritage that would allow a social rise from the "democratic school" by the most disadvantaged classes, at the end of the schooling process, become a deception and a disappointment.