Relevance of the cultural dimension for the schooling of black children.

Author(s)

Thiago dos Santos Molina

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Educação (FE/SBD)
• Defense date: 2011-06-06

Examining board members

Roseli Fischmann; Eduardo David de Oliveira; Maria do Rosario Silveira Porto

• Advisor: Roseli Fischmann

Abstract

The Master thesis entitled Relevance of the cultural dimension for the schooling of Black children investigates initiatives of schooling raised in contexts of affirmation of Afro-Brazilian existential values. It seeks to (a) explore the theoretical basis and school practices of pedagogies based upon cultural re-elaborations of the Black Diaspora and (b) discuss the relation between the students culture and the school culture which underlies those educative conceptions. We depart from the hypothesis that the presence of Afro-Brazilian history and culture in the school curriculum might favor the process of schooling for Black children. A number of studies have shown that Black children are more vulnerable to being placed at risk of school failure and school drop-out, and also to be susceptible to suffering racial discrimination at school. The text comes up with a second hypothesis, which does not exclude the former: the presence of Afro-Brazilian history and culture as an instrument of schooling indeed favors the experience of schooling of Black children; on the other hand, taking Afro-Brazilian history and culture as a grounds for schooling requires the emergence of a different school culture, because a transformation of this kind changes not only pedagogical contents and teaching practices, but also the very understanding of what School, as an institution, is about. This research project started in March 2008; to achieve our results we conducted documentary, bibliographic and field research on the Political Pedagogical Project Irê Ayó (Path to Joy in Yoruba language), which has been ap.lied since 1999 at Municipal School Eugênia Anna dos Santos, in Salvador, Bahia, placed in the Afro-Brazilian religious (candomblé) temple Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá. The history of the implementation of this project made us turn our attention to a former project implemented at the same school between 1978 and 1986, Mini Comunidade Obá Biyi. We took the adinkra sankofa as a methodological procedure that allowed us to align both initiatives; we tried to look into both projects legacies to think over specific educational public policies for Black children in the future. Therefore we adopted three interrelated dimensions as criteria for the evaluation of everyday life school practices: (I) the institutional or organizational dimension; (II) the pedagogical dimension: and (III) the sociopolitical and cultural dimension, as proposed by Marli André. We found theoretical sup.ort to the strategic differentiation of education and schooling from Mwalimu Shujaa and took our references on the repositioning of Black culture in the Diaspora from Mestre Didi, Muniz Sodré and Juana Santos. Our ideas on the contribution of Black activism for the educational thought stem from Nilma Gomes and Petronilha Silva, and our arguments on the need of culturally relevant teaching for Black children follow Gloria Ladson-Billingss writings. We built on Narcimária Luz e Marco Aurélio Luz to grasp the role of eurocentrism in Pedagogical thought, and we finally could, from Vanda Machado, rethink the utopia of schooling Black children, departing from their existential values. We could understand from that the clashes between schooling and Afro-Brazilian culture, forging the notion of Didactic of double consciousness, inspired by the thought of W. E. B. Du Bois. (AU)