Informal Education: What It Is, Characteristics, Advantages And Disadvantages
Education is a fundamental pillar because it is one of the factors that has the greatest influence on the progress and advancement of people and, therefore, of different cultures and societies. In addition to enriching culture and promoting knowledge, it also promotes a series of values. For all this and much more, education is very necessary.
We can find different types of education: formal, non-formal and informal, the latter being the one we are going to focus on. Informal education would be that which is carried out outside of all types of traditional educational institutions and would be an alternative that offers the possibility of developing less conventional learning processes than in other types of education.
In this article We will see what informal education consists of and their characteristics.
Education, as we well know, is the way that people transmit our knowledge and this involves a process of learning a series of knowledge and skills. Likewise, education is a type of training that is used for the fundamental purpose of promote the growth of intellectual and moral capacity of people
As we had previously mentioned, there are different types of education. Firstly, we can find informal education, which would be that which is developed without structured planning and which, therefore, is based on everyday life and is carried out in the less formal educational environment. In this sense, we could say that this type of education is not what would appear within educational institutions nor in the curricular field. On the contrary, this education is developed in places in the social and everyday environment, with the learning subject being the active part of his or her own education.
In second place, Formal education is that which is carried out in a regulated and planned manner, in addition to being developed intentionally This would be the most common education that we can find, since it is what is normally developed within compulsory education institutions, from preschool until the end of secondary education studies.
Finally, we can find non-formal education, which is that which is developed in a planned and intentional manner, but outside the scope of compulsory education That is, non-formal education would be that which is taught in adult training centers where all types of courses are taught and it would also be that type of teaching of activities related to sports and leisure, among others.
We could say then that the big difference between formal and non-formal education is that the latter is developed in the extracurricular context, being a type of education that is not completely institutionalized as if formal education is, which is also the one that is controlled by the government of each country and is what all children must receive compulsorily until they reach a certain age (e.g., in Spain compulsory education, which is formal; by law all children must receive it and they cannot abandon it at least until they have reached the age of 16).
Now that we have briefly seen what the different types of education consist of, which encompass the different teaching modes that we can find in 3 large categories, we are going to proceed to explain in greater detail what informal education consists of.
Informal education would be that which is developed in non-formal educational settings and without planning as structured as in formal education. Besides, takes place outside of all types of traditional educational institutions, it should be noted that informal education is legal in some countries. However, it is important to point out that one should not necessarily opt for formal education alone or informal education, but both can be given together and complement each other in such a way that this represents great enrichment at the level of learning very important knowledge.
What’s more, we could say that all of us who have received a formal education throughout our childhood and adolescence at school and secondary school have also taken advantage of and continue to take advantage of the learning we have done throughout our lives. developed thanks to different modes of informal education, such as some examples that we will see later.
Likewise, we could say that within informal education we could include any type of learning that takes place outside the regulated school context and that involves the acquisition of new knowledge, thanks to the active participation of the subject (e.g., showing interest in reading books that you are passionate about and read on your own, participating in all kinds of cultural activities, etc.). Furthermore, informal education enables the development of habits and the acquisition of skills, values ​​and the living of enriching experiences outside the school context
This type of education brings with it a wide diversity of alternative ways of educating and teaching knowledge, such as the following: home education, outside of government-regulated educational institutions, so that training is carried out in the Normally the home environment, although sometimes teachings are also included in places within nature such as the mountains or even in places in the area where one resides such as centers in the neighborhood that have been created for teaching purposes. .
On the other hand, within informal education, educators, whether or not they work for pay, teach classes for a wide diversity of students and groups, which can be developed through community, social plans, institutions or foundations of different types. Here we can find some examples, such as spontaneous learning of a skill, learning the value of money used in the country in which one resides, self-taught learning of a series of knowledge through library books or through reading popular articles.
Nowadays we could also include within formal education that learning that the Internet offers us through different blogs or digital dissemination magazines, such as through this digital magazine on psychology and related branches in which we find ourselves, as well as through videos that we can find on the Internet and in which a series of knowledge and are found on the Internet, as well as through reading magazines, newspapers and/or books on one’s own, visiting museums, cinemas, theaters and even by watching documentaries, etc.
Advantages and disadvantages of informal education
Before concluding this article and after having seen in a little more detail what informal education consists of, it is time to explain what the advantages and disadvantages of informal education are.
1. Advantages of informal education
Among the advantages of informal education we will begin by saying that It is a more natural and even more practical way of learning sometimes, since it is a way to learn at any time and anywhere from your day-to-day experiences. This way of teaching does not stop, since even on vacation it can be used to teach new things to children by going to places with nature where they can learn or visiting places that allow cultural enrichment.
Likewise, informal education involves a series of activities such as personal research on a topic that has aroused some interest and this leads to the use of books, search for popular articles on the topic, use of different web resources or libraries, visits to places related to the topic of interest, etc.
Another advantage of informal education is that does not require schedules, since it can be learned at any time of the day and also includes a wide variety of learning methods, such as reading videos, teaching by parents, family members or anyone who is informed about a topic of interest to learn. The Internet also offers us a wide variety of possibilities to learn about all kinds of topics that interest us.
In most cases and in a large number of countries we can acquire a wide variety of knowledge thanks to the available resources we have such as public libraries and museums and, of course, through the Internet, so today, Except in exceptional cases and depending on which country you live in, there are no excuses not to get started when it comes to being curious to learn about different areas of knowledge.
2. Disadvantages of informal education
Although in informal education, if it does not represent a replacement for formal and/or non-formal education, we can find a wide variety of advantages; However, it is also not exempt from having some disadvantages such as those we are going to discuss below.
One of the drawbacks of informal education is that the information we can obtain through the Internet or some media, including newspapers or magazines, they do not always offer the most truthful information What’s more, sometimes even this type of media tries to bias information about a series of topics, as may be the case with news about politics. On the other hand, information is not always sought from appropriate sources to acquire quality knowledge on a topic of interest.
Among the disadvantages of informal education, it is also worth mentioning that we can find that this way of learning is not useful if it is not carried out constantly with a certain discipline and good habits. And it would be of little use to us if, for example, we start reading a book about a topic that we find interesting if we are not constant when reading it and when we want to resume reading we have already forgotten everything. which we had read previously).
In short, we could say that informal education, if it is complemented in an orderly manner, without one type of education interfering with another, with formal education and even with non-formal education, can be a very useful education that will provide us with series of very useful knowledge, even opening up a wide range of possibilities by having greater knowledge about areas of knowledge that we find interesting and to which we would not have had access at the educational center which we attend.
