The article is an analysis of the contradictions of public policy on rural education unleashed amid the struggle for agrarian reform by the peasants against the neoliberal project of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1998-2002) and Lula da Silva's government (2003-2010). The analysis is guided by the historic resistance of rural workers in defence of assuring the right to a quality public education and the governments' role in structuring programmes and adopting legal frameworks that eventually gave partial support to the demands. However, as agrarian reform has not materialized and agribusiness has kept growing in rural areas, education remains a major agenda of social movements so they can feed the hopes and achievements against the latifundia, exploitation, extermination and the criminalisation of the poor.
rural education; public education policy; agrarian reform and education; neoliberal education policy