A critical review of the nature of education as a universal right in peripheral societies, based on the analysis of the social and cultural circumstances that permeate the learning experience of the written Portuguese language in Brazilian schools. The concept of cultural bilingualism is defended as necessary in facing the demand for subjectivation of the universal right to education, supported by facts of written production among school subjects. It also justifies the overcoming of the classic concepts of bilingualism, listed exclusively from grammatical-functional aspects or issues of use that are restricted to linguistic facts. Situations of tension stand out in the contact between oral and written Portuguese of Brazil - symbolically considered the Brazilian national language - whose origin goes back to historical-cultural aspects that acted in the process of the implantation of the Portuguese language in Brazilian territory. Derived from such aspects, there are situations of languages in contact that can only be properly explained by the concept of cultural bilingualism.