The Josué de Castro Institute of Education, sponsored by the Technical Institute for Training and Research into the Agrarian Reform, which is associated with the landless workers' movement, provides both secondary education and technical training. The aim of this paper is to explain the principal features of this school, and to clarify whether its underlying educational premises, which seem to be similar to those extant in the schools under MST control, contain educational characteristics which are of interest to the working classes in general, from a democratic and popular point of view. The investigation showed that the Institute, whose structure and organisation differ from those commonly found in state schools, takes as its motto such educational categories as the union between education and work and democratic management processes in which students, teachers and school staff participate.
education; work; self-management