SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION, ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION AND TRADITIONAL COMMUNITIES: A STUDY OF SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES IN THE USE OF CABACEIRAS (BAOBABS) PLANTS BY THE FULA ETHNIC GROUP IN GUINEA-BISSAU
traditional knowledge, scientific education, environmental education, decoloniality.
The context of education in Guinea-Bissau and especially in the village of Québo explains the failures committed over a period of time regarding the approach to environmental education, the non-inclusion of the dialogue of traditional knowledge from ethnic groups, such as the Fula of Guinea-Bissau, is recurrent. In that regard, it is necessary to focus on the aspects that exceed the knowledge based only on eurocentrism, which makes scientific knowledge the only holder of absolute truth. Over the years, questions have arisen about this type of thinking, based on the recognition that there are various forms of knowledge, all of them legitimate. This flag is defended by the decolonial current that stands against this universalist vision in education and in human relations based on hierarchization, which is the result of European colonization. Furthermore, the world is faced with serious environmental problems, whose consequences are climate change, extreme droughts, abnormal winds and rains and those are caused by the action of human beings and as a result of capitalism, which only seeks profit. It is necessary to promote scientific education and environmental education that including the ideas and voices of traditional populations and their knowledge in this debate, with a commitment to overcoming coloniality, marked by discrimination and superiority of knowledge. In this context, for Africans, orality as a form of transmission of knowledge is a resistance, in which the elders preserve a way of life and transmit knowledge to future generations. In this sense, this work aims to understand the sustainable practices in the use of gourd plants, transmitted orally, constructed by members of the Fula ethnic group, residing in the city of Québo in Guinea-Bissau as a reference for the critical and decolonial. In this sense, this research aims to discuss the need to review the school curriculum in Guinea-Bissau, which brings external influences, and it is far from the social reality that encompasses several African cultures, including that of the Fulas, who residing in the village of Québo, where this work was carried out, developed with Djumbai methodology. THE consideration in the curriculum of traditional knowledge about the baobab plant is presented as a proposal committed to the construction of a decolonial curriculum for local schools.