Non-formal learning - what is it and who gets it?

I've been invited to attend an RSA event about non-formal learning called "Vision not Division – Learning for all in the 21^st Century". We’ve been offered a definition of "non-formal learning" as “…a process of social learning centred on the learner that is realized through activities outside of the formal education system” (World Development Report 2007), and we've been asked to make notes beforehand on our own experiences of this sort of thing. To help us do this, we've been given these examples: "playing in a local sports team, attending a youth club, undertaking voluntary service”.

This has set me wondering. First of all, why does the World Development Report use the term ‘social’? I see no necessary link between ‘non-formal’ and ‘social’. Then the three examples we've been given seem to me to comprise a very traditional, old-fashioned view of non-formal learning as something socially/morally acceptable with an emphasis on communal values: safe, nice activities that would keep us off the streets. I've got nothing against such activities, but if we were to confine our discussions to this sort of thing we ought to narrow down the definition to read “…a process of social learning centred on the learner that is realized through organised activities outside of the formal education system”

Even so, we ought be able to acknowledge that people often make conscious and purposeful decisions to learn something when they:

• · watch a documentary on TV or at the cinema
• · buy specialist magazines
• · visit websites
• · use a library
• · visit a museum, theme park or zoo
• · use a tourist guide to go sightseeing

These activities all involve learning and are often driven by people's incessant desire to learn things or at least to acquire information and/or techniques. They may of may not be 'social', but they're certainly informal, and they are 'centred on the learner': the providers in each case probably don't use the word 'pedagogy' but that's what they're doing.

The agenda for the event looks as though it's going to ignore things like ‘the digital revolution’ and ‘the information society’, even though these dominate other kinds of discussion about 21st century society and culture. I hope we don't end up just talking about condescending, socially-controlling versions of non-formal learning and ignoring the ways in which the media and leisure industries are thriving on people’s obvious and growing interest in all kinds of non-formal learning, achieved in pleasurable, unthreatening and often entertaining ways. Watch this space!