How do Indios write numbers?
Pr. Eduardo Sarquis Soares
At the edge of the river Içana, affluent of the Rio Negro, 65 teachers attended a meeting promoted by the education department of the municipality. They had a question for the visitor who came to offer a workshop about teaching mathematics: « How do the indigenous write numbers? »
Dialogical education is a way of conceiving the relation between knowledge and the particularities of the culture of each social group. Knowledge is understood as the set of wisdom that each generation inherits from previous ones. This wisdom is supposed to allow the reproduction and evolution of current living conditions.
This seminar proposes an introduction to dialogical education illustrated by an experience with indigenous teachers from the Amazon region known as Cabeça do Cachorro, municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, state of Amazonas, Brazil. The dialogical aspect of the study presented here will mostly concern the cultural environment in which the learners are immersed as central to the formal and informal educational processes, both in the official school system and outside it.
A presentation will be followed by a workshop and a discussion. Upon their inscription, participants will be sent a short mathematical problem to work on in preparation.