"The seeds of this study were planted in 1966 and 1967 when, as a Peace Corps volunteer, I worked with the agricultural labor union in Jaboatao, Pernambuco. As a young and naive North American whose only prior political education had been a peripheral observer of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, I imagined that my middle-class education would enable me to work as a catalyst to bring immediate progress to the impoverished sugar workers.

But it turned out that they were the teachers and I was the student. One example should suffice. Noting the lack of schools on the sugar plantations, I decided that a school would be a good project--and a feasible one, since certainly no one would be opposed to education. Construction materials could be obtained through voluntary contributions raised at a U.S. school, and the sugar workers were more than happy to do the construction work if a teacher could be provided. The mayor of Jaboatao and several councilmen agreed that the town would provide a teacher.

Now all we needed was about an acre of land. I was sure that the owner of the major sugar mill and associated lands would part with one acre out of his thousands so that part of his work force and their families could get a basic education. After he turned down our request for a building site, two of the union leaders told me that they had known all along that we couldn't build the school, but because I was so enthusiastic about it they had to let me find out for myself. They explained that no one with even an elementary education would stay on the plantation, so it was the "Doctor's" interest to keep his workers uneducated."