The debate on rural education is marked by theoretical confrontations that emerge in two currents, in which the relationship between man and nature is set. The first is marked by the developmentalist vision of the 1970s, in which rural people had to dominate nature without preserving it, where land cultivation was closely connected to agribusiness, still in its infancy in Brazil, and rural education was moving towards a proposal that disregarded working people. The second, with a philosophy that respects the working subjects of the countryside, is moving towards their emancipation, among the realities of the countryside, the forest, the quilombolas, the caiçaras and the riverside dwellers. The book 'Escola do campo: verso e reverso de uma realidade', analyses a microcosm located in the Amazon, in the municipality of Novo Airão. In its three chapters, it reflects on how the policy of rural education is based in Brazil, since the 1988 Constitution; how it is structured in the rural reality of Novo Airão/Am and, finally, how it can be translated into the school space, with reference to reading and writing for the first years of primary school.