Militant Education, Liberation Struggle, Consciousness: The PAIGC Education in Guinea Bissau 1963-1978
by Sonia Vaz Borges
(Peter Lang Publishers, £40)

   
“CHILDREN are the flowers of our struggle and the main reason for our combat,” liberation-movement leader Amilcar Cabral once declared. Education was at the heart of the long war against Portuguese colonialism waged by the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) that he headed.

The same applied to their comrade parties, Frelimo in Mozambique and the MPLA in Angola, and this book by Portuguese scholar Sonia Vaz Borges is a moving and timely reminder of the profoundly original and democratic structures of learning established by the PAIGC half a century ago.

There is much to learn from that experience and to creatively apply by teachers today. The Guinean militants’ belief in education was absolute, but this was the contrary of passive or merely receptive learning.