Which deceives us more, memories or documents? Experiences of Freinet’s pedagogy in the rural school in the 1970s

Abstract

Analyzing classroom practices applied in the 1970s requires the researcher to combine the use of oral and written sources. However, it is not always possible to examine in a systematic way the contribution of each one of them to the investigation. Taking advantage of the existence of both types of sources related to the educative work of the militants of Freinet’s movement, in this article I will try to compare the historical reconstruction based on memories with conclusions founded on the analysis of documents. This comparison is carried out in a very constricted and controllable social context – a couple of rural schools – that allows one to observe in a very clear way how both the memories and the documents can distort or illuminate the phenomenon which interests us: the consequences of the usage of Freint’s pedagogy in the rural school in Salamanca.