A revolutionary school

You can’t expect just to open the doors of a traditional school and have working children flock in. Anthony Swift reports from a Brazilian school that has torn up all the rules.

The city of Emmaus School was once totally revolutionary, attracting wide attention in Brazil and from further afield. Now it is among a growing minority of schools trying to make themselves relevant to poor community children. It was created in the early 1980s when animators of the Republic of Small Vendors, famous for its work with children on the city streets, realized that a major reason why such children had abandoned school was the inappropriate education on offer. Everything about the school was strikingly different. In place of the customary brick box with little or no space for play, independent circular classrooms of Amazonian Indian design were distributed in spacious surroundings of playing fields and natural bush. Circular rooms, lacking any set focal point, are ideal for education that emphasises pupil participation.

The quality of the relationship between teacher and children is regarded as key to the educational process. The teacher is friend, guide and facilitator.

"We used to joke that we had married Don Bosco (founder of the Salesians) to Maria Montessori," says Georgina, a former street educator, at one time responsible for the school’s educational approach. “Don Bosco, because of the relationship we offer to the child. Montessori for the richness of the educational materials. Paulo Freire and our own street experience provide the concept of education that starts from the concept of education that starts from the child's own reality and develops with the child's active participation.

Admission preference goes to children from families with the fewest resources. In order to be non-fee paying, the school sought government status. The teachers are state employees but the school determines its own educational priorities and methodology.

The school is not rigid about the children keeping to a schedule, respecting the fact that they have other responsibilities. There is no school uniform “parents can’t afford them.

"Children sometimes come to say they can’t attend because they have no shoes or no shirt. We tell them: “It’s not your shoes or shirt that is going to learn. It’s you! So come on in!!" says Maria Jose Castro.