Uniting dilferent aspects ofknowing: every day,play and education of the people of Barra

Abstract

This articJe surveys the more interesting characteristics of a process that produced a rudirnentary combination of formal schooling and informal education which was established between masters and pupils in a semi-isolated community. For the school to work, it was necessary to adjust the curriculum and the procedures of formal education to a radically different traditional process of acquisition and transmission of knowledge in which play exercises a fundamental social and pedagogical function. Although it does not indistinctly serve as a referential model - among other reasons, because it deals with a specific cultural stronghold with very special characteristics - it is important to observe the exemplar way that parents, teacher and children interfere in school work, valorizing the curriculum with their conceptions of life, history and beliefs.