Based on a Central American perspective- the region where the author of the present paper now lives and works - the study discusses the role of school with reference to different cultural contexts and to border cultures. It argues that those different contexts firstly include indigenous cultures in Latin American, which go beyond geographical borders and present singularities that cannot be ignored by the school, since they represent on-going challenges to its everyday practices. Secondly, it deals with the contemporary globalisation, which not only creates a "new world order" but also new border cultures that invade local spaces and generate new orders for the "excluded cultures". Those new orders are expressed in the presence of informal and occasional jobs, as well as in prostitution, drugs, violence and other sorts of rebellions. The argument is that school should endeavour to understand them as a new form of colonialism and help going beyond them, in the ways proposed by Paulo Freire's pedagogy.
culture; school; bordes cultures