Teaching Math as a Narrative of Solidarity

GDR Educational Cooperation and Unforeseen Collaborations in the FRELIMO Mozambican Math Textbooks (1971–1975)

Sonia Vaz Borges

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Sonia Vaz Borges, Teaching Math as a Narrative of Solidarity (30.03.2024), Beltz Juventa, 69469 Weinheim, ISSN: 0514-2717, 2023 #1, p.145

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Description / Abstract

The period between 1960 and 1974 constituted the time span of the liberation struggles from Portuguese colonialism in several colonized territories in the African continent. The struggles that developed then can be also described as a Bulimundo period. Bulimundo, a Guinean and Creole expression, meant bulir o mundo – to agitate the world. In a way, it means to set a revolution in motion. It was also in this time span that the liberation movements in Portuguese-speaking Africa, such as FRELIMO (Mozambique, the PAIGC (Cape Vert and Guinea-Bissau) and the MPLA (Angola), developed anticolonial and decolonial educational practices. This article focuses on the production and circulation of the two math textbooks developed between 1969 and 1973 for Mozambican schools. It uncovers a narrative of transnational solidarity and unforeseen collaborations that went beyond the ideological trench warfare of the Cold War in the context of the liberation movements during in 1960s and 1970s. Based on interviews and German archival material, the article analyses the political messages incorporated in the textbooks’ exercises, keeping in mind the period of armed liberation struggle and the transition to socialism, the political direction the territory was heading towards following independence.

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