2002 and 2005. It also runs the Popular University of Social Movements (PUSM) at a campus in Guararema, São Paulo. Also called Florestan Fernandes School (FFS), after Marxist scholar Florestan Fernandes, the school offers secondary school classes in a variety of fields; its first graduating class (2005) of 53 students received degrees in Specialized Rural Education and Development. With the University of Brasília, the government of Venezuela and the NGO Via Campesina, as well as agreements with federal, state and community colleges, it offers classes in pedagogy, history, and agronomy, and technical subjects at different skill levels. The building was constructed with by brigades of volunteers using soil cement bricks made onsite at the school. The late Oscar Niemeyer designed an auditorium and further sustainable, low environmental impact expansion of the school complex is pending. The MST formed its education sector in Rio Grande do Sul in 1986, a year after its first national convention. By 2001, about 150,000 children attended 1,200 primary and secondary schools in its settlements and camps. The schools employ 3,800 teachers, many of them MST-trained. The movement has trained 1,200 educators, who run classes for 25,000 young people and adults. It trains primary-school teachers in most states of Brazil, and partners with international agencies such as UNESCO, UNICEF and the Catholic Church. Seven institutions of higher education in different regions provide degree courses in education for MST teachers. Some call MST communal schools markedly better than their conventional counterparts in rural communities, in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Media coverage The role of the MST as a grassroots organization running charter schools activity has attracted considerable attention from the Brazilian press, much of it accusatory. Veja, Brazil's largest magazine, known for unrestrained hostility to social movements in general published a profile of two MST schools in Rio Grande do Sul and said the MST was "indoctrinating" children between 7 and 14. Children were also shown what the article called propaganda films, which taught that genetically modified (GMO) products contain "poison", and were advised not to eat margarine that might contain GMO soybean. The Brazilian authorities allegedly had no control over MST schools, and according to the profile they did not follow the mandatory national curriculum set out by the Ministry of Education, which calls for "pluralism of ideas" and "tolerance". "Preaching" "Marxism" in MST schools was analogous to preaching radical Islam tenets in madrassas, the