form an educated elite at the service
of an exploitative group. We do not
want science to be used to enrich a
minority, oppress man and stifle the
creative initiative of the masses, the inexhaustible source of collective progress.
Each of us must assume his revolutionary
responsibilities in education, regarding
books, study, as tools at the exclusive
service of the masses. Studying must be
seen as a revolutionary task to be combined with the revolutionary tasks of production and fighting. He who studies
should be like a spark lighting the
flame which is the people.
The principal task of education, in our
teaching, textbooks and programmes, is
to instill in each of us the advanced,
scientific, objective and collective ideology which enables us to progress in the
revolutionary process.
Education must prepare us to internalise
the   new  society and its requirements.
Education must give us a Mozambican
personality which, without subservience
of any kind and steeped in our own realities, will be able, in contact with the
outside world, to assimilate critically the
ideas and experiences of other peoples,
also passing on to them the fruits of our
thought and practice.
We need a consciousness of responsibility
and collective solidarity, free from all
individualism and corruption. We have
to acquire a scientific attitude, open and
free from the dead weight of superstition
and dogmatic traditions.
We need particularly to create a new
attitude in women, emancipating their
consciousness and behaviour, and at the
same time instill in men new behaviour
and attitudes towards women.
We must make everyone aware of the
need to serve the people, to participate in
production, to respect manual labour, to
release creative initiative and to develop
a sense of responsibility. In short, what
we want is a revolutionary mentality
which uses science to serve the people.
Our continued progress depends on the
new generation. Today there are young
people growing up away from colonialism, away from dogmatic traditions.
There is a generation, the first, which is
being formed in the heat of the revolution.
This is the generation which will be
called upon in the 20 years to come to
carry on the task we are starting. They
are the plant nursery from which will
come the selected plants ensuring the
ultimate triumph of the revolution.
In this respect the task of teachers and
cadres in education is an extraordinarily
delicate one,   because like us they grew
up and were formed in the old world, and
carry within them many bad habits and
defects, a lot of individualism and ambition, many corrupt and superstitious
attitudes which are harmful and might
contaminate the new generation.
Teachers and education cadres must behave like the doctor who, before approaching the patient in the operating theatre,
disinfects and sterilises himself so as not
to infect the patient.
Through constant meetings, through continual criticism and self-criticism, teachers
and education cadres must eliminate old
ideas and tastes, so as to be able to acquire the new mentality and pass it on to
the next generation.
How would we classify a doctor or nurse
who contaminates patients? Who instead of caring for them and saving them,
passes on diseases to them?
We must show maximum severity towards
anyone among the teachers and education
cadres who displays subjectivism, individualism, tribalism, arrogance, superstition or ignorance.
In short, the teacher, the education cadre,
united with the masses, must wage an internal struggle, must disinfect himself,
getting rid of the old and wholly internalising the new.
II. THE PRESENT REQUIREMENTS
Apart from the long-term task of creating
a new mentality, there are requirements
of the present situation which education
is called upon to meet. We cannot create
a new society without destroying the old,
without overthrowing colonialism and its
vestiges, without creating the economic
foundations for advancing the war and
our society.
a) Unity and education
One of the prime concerns of education
should be the unity of the people. Colonialism sought to accentuate all ethnic,
linguistic, religious and cultural divisions
there might be among the Mozambican
people. At the same time, traditional
education by extolling the cult of the
linguistic community to which a person
belongs, instills in him an attitude of
contempt, and at times even of hatred,
towards other communities.
In our teaching we should bring out the
similarities in the conditions of the Mozambican people as a whole. We should
explain how colonialism exploits every
region. The pupil needs to realise that
the Mueda peasants' struggle against cotton growing is no different to the struggle of the sugar cane growers on the banks
of the Zambezi, that the struggle of the
stevedores in Lourenco Marques is the
same as that of the miners in Tete.
Workers shipped from Nampula to Sao
Tome or to the Lourenco Marques railways suffer the same exploitation as the
men from Gaza who are sold to South
Africa. The fishermen and rice cultivators in Manica e Sofala are exploited by
the same foreigner as occupies the oilfields of Inhambane. Taxes were just as
crushing a burden on the people of Niassa
who, like all Mozambicans, never saw a
school or hospital which catered for them.
At the same time, the pupil must identify with the heroic traditions of our
whole country: the fight of Maguiguane,
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