'School does not teach burying the dead': the complexity of cultural dialogue

Abstract

This paper aims at decoding problems and meanings of situations that frequently occur in socio-educational contexts, while concurrently showing real difficulties to establish intercultural dialogue. It is a critical reflection on fieldwork developed in Mozambique in 2006 by Cardoso Cuale. Cuale was a Primary School teacher who attended a research and assessment training course. This text analyses the work he presented at the end of the training period, and describes cultural conflicts he identified in a school in rural Mozambique. Those conflicts occurred between educational proposals, students, administrative authorities and traditional authorities in consequence of the application of the new Basic Education curriculum, and show difficulties to establish an intercultural dialogue. (c) 2011 Pedagogy, Culture & Society.