As relações de gênero e educação na Escola Secundária da Frelimo em Bagamoyo, 1970-1974

Abstract

The Foundation of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) on June 25, 1962 began a process of change in the lives of the majority of the Mozambican people who were deprived of access to wisdom through the domain of science and technology. This opportunity was banned by the Portuguese colonial regime, which intended to exploit the Mozambican labor force in a compulsive way. One of the Front's strategies was to build a project for teaching outlined at the 1st FRELIMO Congress and consolidated at the 2nd, which initially aimed to train cadres who would later be engaged in the struggle, and mainly to encourage women to take part in this process. . The priority given to women was a way of making the revolution triumph because, according to Frelimist principles, the triumph of the revolution necessarily entailed the emancipation of women. To respond to this educational demand, Pilot Centers were established in the Liberated Zones in the interior of the country, which, given the lack of security conditions, could only provide primary education ranging from 1st to 4th grade. In turn, the Mondlane couple founds a project of a private nature, intending to support the teaching area. Thus, with funding from various international and humanitarian organizations supporting the cause of the struggle, the Mozambican Institute was built in Dar-Es-Salaam, which provided primary and secondary education. This school received students from different parts of the Liberated Zones in the interior of the country. However, the Mozambican Institute was eventually closed as a result of the implantation within FRELIMO of two antagonistic political currents, one revolutionary and the other reactionary. This ideological war culminated in the assassination of the then first president of FRELIMO, Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane. This crisis not only left a great void within the movement but also in the area of ​​secondary education, as it is the only secondary education institution. The FRELIMO Secondary School in Bagamoyo (the subject of this thesis) which opened its doors on October 25, 1970, appears in the context of that crisis. Inspired by the Mozambican Institute project, she was able to continue teaching. The first number of students was fifty-two (52) of which only four (4) were girls. Its teaching program was for a general and intensive secondary school, with manuals being written by the respective teachers. The link between teaching theory and practice were two inseparable elements as they complemented each other. Until the transfer of the School from Bagamoyo (Tanzania) to Ribáuè (in Nampula province) in 1974 as a result of the fall of the Fascist regime of Salazar, it had more than three hundred (300) students of which only twenty-two (22) students and zero (0) students left with the 8th grade level corresponding to the 10th grade. The students who studied at the FRELIMO Secondary School in Bagamoyo were from different ethnicities, cultures and religions. This cultural crossover resulted in the exchange of experience between them, and consequently in the elimination of certain habits considered traditional and their transformation into a New Man. However, despite this harmonious coexistence or camaraderie between girls and boys at school, there were also conflicting moments. If, on the one hand, the students had their conflicts, on the other hand, the school introduced a very strict regulation typical of a headquarters (students were also considered military personnel, the only difference being that they were there to study) where obedience was only due . The regulation prohibited dating. However, some girls were forcibly removed from school to go and marry some FRELIMO commanders. Faced with this situation, girls and boys adopted a form of clandestine survival as a way to satisfy their affective relationships. The impact of such attitudes was reflected in the pregnancies and expulsion of the guilty. Despite the tensions and conflicts that characterized the short period of existence of the FRELIMO Secondary School in Bagamoyo, and the low number of female students, its experience constituted an important laboratory in terms of education and learning about gender relations(TRADUÇÃO NOSSA)