In and Out of School : The ROSLA Community Education Project

Originally published in 1978, reissued here with a new preface, this book describes a project based outside the school institution, but in co-operation with it, exploring methods and courses which might offer meaningful education for groups of fifth-form leavers.

Though the project had been primarily concerned with developing a survival curriculum for the non-academic urban adolescent, the format of living, experiential teaching and learning it exemplifies would be appropriate to the education of children of all ages and abilities. The authors identified community resources and offer suggestions as to how these might be better employed.

They show how education could be taken out of the classroom to extend ‘schooling’ beyond the schools, and in this context they point to the vast, untapped resources of both people and buildings outside the school walls which could profitably be incorporated within the existing learning framework.

They show, also, how the training of ‘professionals’ – particularly trainee teachers and social workers – by involvement in such an experiment could constitute a fundamental preparation for their future roles. Finally, the authors urge for an extension of social policy with regard to education; an extension of provision which they argue could be achieved largely through the re-allocation of existing resources, such as had already demonstrably worked in the city of Bristol.

The perspective throughout is ideological as well as practical, and the book is both a polemic and a procedural manual suggesting workable approaches and ideas, many of which are still relevant today.