Abstract:
The history of education of indigenous populations in Mozambique was marked by the colonizing action of Portugal, since the fifteenth century, until its national independence in 1975. This work intends to present and problematize the main landmarks of this process, in the time span of 150 years, from 1834, during the Colonial Period, to 1984, at the beginning of the Post-Independence Era. This contribution to the understanding of the history of education of Mozambican natives results from part of a doctoral study developed in the context of educational policies, carried out through a qualitative approach using the bibliographical method based on documentary sources. The interpretation of the data leads us to point out a set of colonising practices of discrimination, marginalisation and imposition of a language, as well as of cleavage and creation of a gap between the indigenous populations and the children of the colonisers. These social classes were assigned differentiated and penalizing educational regimes for the natives, since they aimed at reproducing and perpetuating the system of colonial domination, mainly through its orientation towards the production of labour. We also found that some of these marks of the past remained in the Post-Independence Era as an inheritance of a certain educational culture with which the Mozambican people struggle to achieve their designs.
Keywords:
history of education; indigenous populations; Mozambique; colonial period; post-independence