The national commission had picked the small village of Porto Mont, a fishing community, as the center of all program activities. I suggested to the local educators that the development program not follow certain traditional methods that tend to separate theory from practice and that we not engage in any sort of work or activity that essentially dichotomized theory and practice either by underestimating theory, denying it any importance, by exclusively emphasizing practice as the only thing to really count, or by undermining practice by focusing only on theory. On the contrary, my intention was to have, from the very beginning, direct experimentation with the contradictions between theory and practice, which will be the object of analysis in one of my letters
I refused, for this very reason, a schedule that reserved the initial moments for so-called theoretical presentations on fundamental content for the development of the future educators. In essence, that meant moments reserved for the speeches of the people deemed better able to speak before others.
My conviction lay elsewhere. I was thinking of a sequence of activities in which, in just one morning, we could discuss some key concepts-codification and de-codification, for example-as if it were a time for presentation but without thinking even for a second that presentations were sufficient for that mastery of certain concepts. What was needed was a critical discussion of the practice in which the educators were about to engage.
Thus, with that basic idea accepted and put into practice, the future educators were asked to coordinate a discussion about codifications in a culture circle with twenty-five participants, who were aware that the activity addressed the professional development of educators. Prior to that, a discussion had been held about the political nature of their task, the task of helping us in a professional development effort, and they knew that they were going to be working with young people in a process of professional development. They knew that neither the teachers they were to work with nor they themselves had ever done anything like what the were going to do. The only difference that marked them was that the participants could only read from the world, while the young teachers in training read the word as well. They had never, however, discussed any codifications or taught literacy before.
Each afternoon in the program, four trainees took charge of the two-hour work sessions with the twenty-five participants. Those responsible for the program watched silently, taking notes. The theory behind the trainees’ actions was revealed the following day during the four-hour evaluation and development seminars, when the mistakes, the errors, and the good point in their performance were discussed in the presence of the entire group.
The glitches and mistakes that had already been made and analyzed were hardly ever repeated. Theory emerged soaked in well-carried-out practice.