This article is the result of bibliographic research that investigated the pedagogical work of Célestin Freinet — in his teaching activities and struggle for popular education in France — and by Paulo Freire — in his adult literacy activities in the Northeast region of Brazil — before the military coup of 1964 —, in his educational work while in exile and in his actions as Secretary of Education of the city of São Paulo. They both developed their own teaching systems having the category of labor as a basis and the undertaking of popular education as an objective. Freinet sought to develop a method of quality primary education within an economically poor environment with the underlying conception that the learner was at the center of all educational activities. Bearing in mind the particularities of their work and the contexts in which they acted, this article states that, despite using different nomenclature and dealing with subjects of completely different ages, both authors developed popular teaching practices on the basis of the principles of education and labor, grounding their work on the pedagogical process as human labor.
Freinet; Freire; Popular education; Education and labor