This text is mainly theoretical. It starts indicating the many faces of the "educational crisis"; a crisis emerging the same time that the global social and political forces are trusting education for a better future. Our main interest concerns on the position of science in compulsory education. The key idea of our argumentation is the assumption that educational structures are reproductive and because of this, they are changing in a dialectical manner, that educational foundations reinforce or prevent "a posteriori". Using Sewell's theory, which represents the features of social/cultural structures and the dynamics of their change, we try to explain the virtuality of teaching-learning processes (concerning not only science) in compulsory education. Finally, we suggest the connection of school with society and the theatre and the game as the proper processes, which could transform this virtual condition into real