The New School

Collective Poem

Turma 8b (1977)
Escola Secundária de Nampula, Mozambique

We want to build
A new school
A true school
With conscious people
Organized and disciplined 
A new school
A true school
Where we can learn
To serve the majority —
Our community!

We want to build
A school for the People
Where everybody learns
What the People teach us — 
To become at last
A school for the people. 

We want to build a school
Where the People 
In the person of the worker
Side by side with the peasant
Are our schoolmasters
Our guides
Our best teachers!

We want to build a school
Where the textbook is the hoe
The exercise book the pick
The pencil the good hammer — 
And the rest
Spade, bucket
And screwdriver. 

So our school 
Won’t be just four walls
But all our district
Our neighborhood
Our community!
As school, a school for all of us
Of our parents, of all our parents
For us, with the good loud sound that calls us, 
An appeal, beautiful and irresistible:
“Come and continue the task you have begun!”
Here I know who I am
Here I know where I’m going
I know here, too, for whom I’m working. 

Here I breathe the Revolution
Here I live the discipline
To better know and serve my People. 

Sadness and happiness I also feel
here, on my bench with my pencil
I translate the sacrifices of my People. 

here, I feel like a bird
Young and newly born
Like a great, new school!

Today sitting at the school’s desks
The school with old walls
But new heads
The eyes of the new student
Looking confidently in class. 

Today 
The new student
With hoe, spade, and machete, 
Today
The new student 
With broom and bucket
With the hose spurting out water
Today
The new student
His hands linked with his comrades’
Singing out the People’s songs
Struggling against the bourgeoisie
In the school
In the neighborhoods — 
Everywhere. 

Today, new student
Finally
You know what to do
To study, to produce, to struggle — 
Today
New student
You are servant of the People!
Defender of the country!

You always ignored
The problems of your children
And yet
You were always afraid to tread on
The white cement
Of the great schools of the minority. 
You never knew them
Because they never permitted you
To enter them, 
You, or your children. 
The great schools of the great gentlemen
They existed 
For you
Existed only
Like a vanishing wish. 
You never had the hot taste of their reality.
Today
Community
You are linked to the school
You live its problems directly
You and your children are prepared
Organized, oriented, 
To serve the majority
You know
And live
In love of your country
With the dearness of a mother
The anxieties, the dreams, the worries
Of your children. 
You
All of you
With hands clasped
Eyes to the future
Hope stamped on your faces
You make your way towards
A new Mozambique.