ABSTRACT
The institutional arrangement of time and space for a “school” within a factory setting is a curious one. The institutional forms of the school are superimposed on the already established factory discipline. The Matola Industrial Company (CIM) “school,” like all schools in all societies, had a set of organizational forms, practices, agents and documents, an institutional arrangement of time and space. A study of “schooling” at CIM, then, means looking at the institutional organization of time and space. In 1986, CIM was able to begin classes only one week after the prescribed starting date, with books and basic supplies more or less in hand. Creating “time” to do literacy within the framework of the formal education system was an enormous struggle. Education was measured by the time spent in the classroom. The dynamic links between literacy and life, classroom and community, that had been part of the spontaneous literacy movement at the time of independence were long in the past.
