Intercultural education as a possibility of recognizing and valuing differences

Abstract

Brazil is a country whose historical construction has been marked by the segregation and exclusion of different social groups who have been treated as inferior by a neocolonial perspective of a society that, being hegemonic and Eurocentric, denies basic rights to these groups, such as education. However, in recent decades, various identity groups, who have been fighting against the hierarchical patterns of these power relations, have brought various achievements in legislation regarding the recognition of their social rights. This article aims to deepen the debate on the issue of differences and diversity in education and on how they can be approached in educational environments from an inclusive perspective. Therefore, it analyzes the concepts of difference and diversity, in their multiple meanings and relationships with the construction of identities and categorization of differences. The article then looks back at the contributions of social movements to the recognition of diversities and differences in Brazilian society, as well as their contribution to advances in educational legislation. Next, by examining the presence of differences in the Brazilian educational structure, it argues about the critical intercultural perspective as a possibility to problematize inequality in current power relations, and it stimulates our questionings about educational paradigms that standardize bodies and minds and, therefore, offers conditions for inclusive education in permanent dialogue with diversity and valuing the alterity. An education based on the critical intercultural perspective demands breaking with the idea of looking at differences from a colonialized perspective, contributing to the construction of an effective socio-diversity.