Why Outside

Why outside the schoolhouse? Why not focus all our energy on increasing attendance, retention, and graduation from institutions providing formal schooling? Click click click, times a wastin’ and only four more years to achieve Education for All–all the more reason to recognize that learning happens everywhere and rather than reproducing an old-fashioned formal schooling model (the “schoolhouse” ) and enforcing rigid and typically externally produced curricula on communities that are unlikely to meaningfully absorb such foreign beasts…why not work with what is already taking place on the ground?

First, a few words about informality–what does it mean, how does it look, and what does it offer?

Informal education programs have the power and freedom to provide students with opportunities that are not accessible in formal schooling. The term takes on different meanings in different contexts and the literature related to informal education is concerned with a broad range of topics. Hunsaker (2006) identifies community-based learning through which “teachers should be prepared to understand that the process of learning is a fluid process that exists within and outside the classroom” (p. 18) as “informal” or “non-formal” because learning takes place outside of planned lessons that are delivered within a classroom. On the other hand, some authors refer to any education undertaken outside the ‘traditional’ timeframe as informal; this is especially common in reference to continuing or adult education (Kenny, Ralph, & Brown, 2000). Spontaneous activities during which learning takes place—from extracurricular sports, music lessons, or impromptu spelling practice at the dinner table—also fall under the rubric of “informal learning” along with more organized educational programs that are not governed by the regulations and influences that public schools are subject to but which are more organized than a random yet educational social exchange (Bekerman, Burbules, & Silberman-Keller, 2007). Finally–to keep the academic speak to a minimum, Livingstone (2007) argues that “informal learning is any activity involving the pursuit of understanding, knowledge, or skill that occurs without the presence of externally imposed curricular criteria. Informal learning may occur in any context outside the pre-established curricula of educative institutions” (p. 206).

So, in short, informal education occupies a broad continuum stretching from the type of spontaneous skill building that takes place during play to organized programs that aim to be educative but which are not governed by core common standards, state, federal, or international curriculum requirements, and other institutional bullies. What interests me most about informal education is the space it affords learners to challenge and reconstruct deeply entrenched power dynamics. Importantly, this challenge and reconstruction of relationship is not only an imperative at your local public school…but one that should also be actively engaged on the global level as the intersection of international organizations, foreign ‘experts,’ and local ‘clients’ of educational programs find themselves occupying the same space.

Let’s face it, schools have tight and enduring power structures–as does the so-called development industry–which at best serve to shape us into good citizens and at worst reproduce the existing distribution of social, political, and economic influence…the school to prison pipeline, gross inequalities in funding public schools, which leads to gross inequalities in resources available for teachers and students and so on and so on. At the international level, a long history of locally irrelevant and thus unsustainable “technical assistance” in the education sector has resulted in too much loss in terms of money, energy, opportunity, and authentic collaboration. Not to mention the creepy and paternalistic power structure….

Where do we go from here? This is a question that I aim to explore–informally, of course–from various angles: anecdotes from my own learning experiences, reviews of ongoing educational initiatives, discussion of obstacles preventing learners from accessing materials needed to continue their education and so on. Join me.