Introduction: learning beyond the school –international perspectives on the schooled society

The premise of this book is simple: that examining forms of out-of-school learning in different countries can help us make sense of school and schooling–and thus by extension the different ways that learning is framed and valued around the world. The reasons for using the comparative lens of out-of-school learning practices and organisations to examine schooling are fourfold: first, is the argument that we are living through an unprecedented period of “educationalisation” – the penetration of forms of school organisation in to everyday life outside of times and structures allocated to schooling in people’s lives – and thus examining such change as a global phenomenon might help us focus on what is at stake in such change. Second, out-of-school institutions, practices, organisational forms, personnel and curriculum reveal a great deal about perceived market failure in schooling itself: in other words, the success and growth of out-of-school as remediation, supplement or complement is a good way to understand the pressures, failures and success of local school systems. Third, the lens of out-of-school draws attention to forms of learning that evade or escape the way that education systems at a national level attempt to determine definitions of learning: any kind of alternative and resistance that exceeds or circumvents formal education points to important wider social values of learning. Finally, and as a fourth argument, the structure of this book, drawing on examples from nearly every continent, enables us to examine the persistence of schooling as a mode of social organisation through global comparison of out-of-school systems and institutions thus helping us avoid the kind of ethnocentric universalism that tends to accrue around studies of national school systems or local schooling.