The Rats under the Rug: The Morphogenesis of Education in a Global Context

This chapter focuses on the boundary work that accompanies the formation of the education system.
Drawing on Michel Serres’s parasitology, it proposes that we rethink the dierences of context
between the household and school as interferences or perturbations of a system that undermine its
normal or aspired-to operativity. The attempt to exclude such disturbance—the expulsion of the so-
called parasite—should accordingly be considered the constitutive moment for the formation of the
education system. On the basis of such characterization, the chapter then turns to contemporary
examples of transnational and digital education that eschew the classroom in favor of new
formalizations that roam far beyond the national project of mass schooling. The global scope of such
education hinges on their ability to successfully reformalize education, thus dismissing the formal
traits of classroom instruction.