Escola: lugar de igualdades ou diferenças?

Abstract

This study reflects a mosaic of perspectives and voices – which are not always translatable and which are not from alike theoretical matrixes – that try to reach a balance point between equality and difference. Regarding many fields, either within political or social or economical or even cultural terms, the debate on the right to be different sustains the idea that the individuals should, based on their cultural singularities, reform their identities. The universal and equalitarian elements which underlie the democratic institutions are enquired, the political sphere loses its status and the cultural one gets to the central point, especially after the Second World War. Within a context that gives worth to the cultural and ethnical “minorities”, new social movements take form, universal identities get unstable and “long narratives” are discussed. The pluralism of the “post-modern” speech starts to engender the notion that all voices should be legitimated. The aspects of a hybrid culture, joined along with the post-structuralism studies and with the post-modern speech are currently marking, in a quite significant way, the social horizon. In education, this movement was concerned with the introduction of a flexible and multicultural curriculum in schools. The relationship between equality and difference, implemented by this study, show that a double-side position is not enough to support the creation of a democratic space. If, on one side, the right to difference allows a universal view, on the other side this right to difference contemplates the relativism. On the first case, it is the public space that comes to mind; on the second case, on the other hand, it is the private space that is underestimated. This polarization produced to all human beings many insecurities and a permanent tension in their social relationship. This work thus suggests the building of democratic schools as a means to support and to consolidate the balance between equality and difference.