Learning in the Community

Learning inthe Community
	Although it is school we associate most often with learning and education, in fact, communities themselves provide open learning environments. Learning as a basic human activity is no longer associated only with formal and structured schooling, with its enclosed spaces, individual assessment and rigid timetables.

Work or assembly places can also be transformed into educational contexts. We can learn on the street or in a shop, a museum, an office, a factory or even a field. Through distance learning we can also participate in educational forums in our own homes.


The notion of the open learning community sees learning as a group or social activity as opposed to a strictly individual one. Communities of learning can build upon cultural institutions as diverse as the societies to which they belong, or can create new forms of cultural expression, thanks mainly to new technologies. What remains constant is the essential human activity of learning reflected in experimentation, exchange, memory and the consequent satisfaction, indeed joy of learning.

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