Nonformal education and the school-community relation

Abstract

This paper analyzes the relation of education to society. Throughout the paper two aspects are stressed: First, the importance of the interaction of the school with organized sectors of the community and second, the educational character of actions and mobilizations developed by organizations, associations and movements of non-formal education area. The paper has two parts: a theoretic-conceptual one, pointing out some key concepts to be used in the analysis; and a part dealing with the relation school-community and the educative character of the participation of the different sociopolitical actors in this relation. The basic hypothesis implied in this text is that the articulation of the educational field (inside and outside the school) with society (civil and political), by means of a shared participation among active citizens from distinct institutions, is one of the main paths to the generation of a new civilizer model which refers to human being in his necessities, potentialities and lived culture, instead of profit, market, competition etc.