This book explores how traditional institutions of education are
affected by the current discourse and practices of 'learning'; and more
specifically, how the evolution towards so-called 'learning
environments' affects the kind of gathering or association that is
staged and configured within families, schools and universities. In
addition, it addresses the question of how to articulate what is
educational in the context of 'making' family, school or university, and
to what extent this making is always also a public act. The aim is to
approach and investigate family, school and university as educational
practices, to focus on the forms of gatherings or associations that take
shape within them, and to explore the public, but also possible
'privatizing' character of these aspects.
The book presents a diverse range of sketches intended as preparatory
study exercises. What they all share, despite the different hands and
eyes, and the different sensitivities, is the attempt to figure out what
education is all about. Three objectives can be distinguished for the
sketches: a cartographic one (to map the discourse of learning but also
the discursive and material arrangements of actual educational
practices), a morphological one (to describe the educational forms of
gathering) and a theoretical one (to bring educational issues into the
discussion). The book's overall aims are to re-establish 'the
educational' as an issue; to make it visible, to give it shape, to give
it a voice, and to make it a thing that can and should be discussed,
thus establishing a point of departure for further inquiry and its
(re)invention.
