Teaching at the borders: quilombo, race and gender

Abstract

Quilombos in Brazil are the most evident mechanism for confronting the slave system, an emblem of the collective resistance that constitutes the African diaspora. In 2012, the national curriculum guidelines for quilombola school education were published. The recommendations and challenges are highlighted for teachers. Could we then talk about quilombola teaching? This article discusses this question based on the narratives of four teachers who recognize themselves as quilombolas, call themselves black and work in schools located in the territories where they live. We followed the trails of the narratives to show who they are and how quilombola teachers were trained and what displacements they produce for the relationship between gender and teaching. The article is organized into five topics. After the introduction, we discussed the pitfalls of teacher training of the interviewed teachers. In the third topic, we reflect on the gender and race relationship and the destabilizations that propose an analysis of the teaching profession. In the next topic, we situate the borders on which quilombola teaching is built and final words