56

The often neglected distinction between school education and lifelong education is not only a quantitative or methodological distinction, it is also an epistemological one. Two different notions of temporality are at work: school education emphasizes organizational features and procedures whereas education in a non-institutional setting depends on living processes that are, by definition, diverse and unstable. The former privileges rationality and attempts to universalize its approaches and contents. The latter, centered on the group rather than on abstract forms of community, can be upset by affect and experience. Lastly, whereas school education is shaped like a trajectory (with a set beginning and end), education throughout life is more like an endless journey. When one fails to distinguish between school instruction and “education at large,” one tends to take for granted phenomena that are actually institutional artifacts.