Against School by Stephen J Ball

Against School by Stephen J Ball

This book invites the reader to think education against, beyond and without the school and its paraphernalia. To think about ‘education’, rather than schooling, and what kind of education is relevant to and needed now in the complex, difficult and dangerous world we live in. That invitation means testing our limits, questioning and changing ourselves and thinking the practice of education differently. The book is not about tinkering, improving, reforming – it about clearing away the detritus of the school and using the space created to explore education as self-formation and commoning. It will be of interest to scholars and graduate students of alternative education, schooling, educational policy and philosophy, and the sociology of education.

“Book is not just a treatise against schools as they are, and 'education' as it is; this is a text about the world as it is, fatally wounded and dangerous, and the role of schools in perpetuating harmThere is much 'food for thought' in this that all (psychologists, educators and others) who try to work within the parameters of 'education' and 'schools' (notions may themselves be category errors) might heed.” (Simon Gibbs, The Psychologist, thepsychologist.bps.org.uk, May 13, 2025)

Stephen J. Ball is Emeritus Professor of Sociology of Education at the Institute of Education, University College London, UK.

Jordi Collet-Sabé is Professor of Sociology of Education and former Vice-Rector for Research at the University of Vic – UCC, Spain.