ABSTRACT
The rhetoric of education and development claims to improve and transform people's lives, but the reality is often the opposite. Education's latent function is to reinforce people's subordination and oppression whilst claiming to be meritocratic in terms of providing equality of opportunity for those with talent to succeed relative to their ability. The school is located in the working-class neighbourhood of La Verneda-Sant Marti (Barcelona). It is important to situate the school historically in the political context of transition to democracy in Spain after the death of Franco in 1976 and the repression of democratic life following the Spanish civil war in the 1930s. This chapter focuses on the school's curriculum and literary gatherings. The gatherings focus on the classics of literature, based on the view that such texts have the capacity to embody enduring themes spanning time and place. The gatherings were reading from John Steinbeck and Gustave Flaubert.
