Out of the Ruins The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces

Contemporary educational practices and policies across the world are heeding the calls of Wall Street for more corporate control, privatization, and standardized accountability. There are definite shifts and movements towards more capitalist interventions of efficiency and an adherence to market fundamentalist values within the sphere of public education. The important news is that emancipatory educational practices are emerging. In many cases, these alternatives have been undervalued or even excluded within the educational research. Out of the Ruins sets out to explore and discuss the emergence of alternative learning spaces that directly challenge the pairing of public education with particular dominant capitalist and statist structures.

Robert Haworth is an assistant professor in the Department of Professional and Secondary Education at West Chester University, Pennsylvania. He edited the book Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education. John M. Elmore is professor and chairperson in the Department of Professional and Secondary Education at West Chester University, Pennsylvania. His research and publications have focused on education for social justice, democracy, atheism, and antiauthoritarianism.