Voices Inside Schools - La Verneda-Sant Martí: A School Where People Dare to Dream

In this article, Montse Sanchez Aroca describes the philosophy, activities, and achievments of La Verneda-Sant Marti, a school for adults in Barcelona, Spain, where Sanchez has taught for ten years. Started as a grassroots project, La Verneda is exceptional as a school for adult education because of the level of involvement of the adults and the democratic process by which students (who refer to themselves as participants), teachers, volunteers, and community members take part in the school's decisionmaking process. Learning and creating are the responsibility of and for the benefit of the entire school community. This is accomplished through egalitarian dialogue, in which everything is discussed and decided collectively; there is no hierarchy in the school's structure. Sanchez illustrates why people in La Verneda say that the school is the realization of a dream. As an example, she describes how students with little formal schooling organize literary circles where they read books by authors such as James...