Abstract: We tell the story of the Basic Education Movement in Pernambuco, through the experience of the monitors and students, who through the letters gave visibility to the limits and expectations regarding literacy. Starting from the cultural history and the history of written culture, we presented the characteristics of production, circulation and content of the letters, which in dialogue with the history of education allowed to identify in the daily experience the strategies mobilized to the operation of radio schools, which made possible the formation of a writing community, with exchange of letters and the circulation of educational content through radio, practices that transformed radio schools into spaces for learning, production and circulation of popular culture.
Keywords:
history of Brazilian education; youth and adult education; non-official documents