Back to the future: notes on the origins of the (long) debate on the continuum in education

For a long time, mainstream sociology understood education almost exclusively in a “formal” sense. Since the early 1980s, in the face of an increasingly crisis in schooling, it emerged a perspective that emphasised circularity and interdependence within the educational system. However, the issue of the symbi-otic relationship between schooling and no-schooling has crossed the sociologi-cal debate since its origins. In order to trace back the main issues emerging from this “old story”, the paper focuses on some particularly significant perspectives that stressed the relationship between formal, non-formal and informal educational contexts: J. Addams’ “applied sociology”, the “Educational sociology” of F.M. Thrasher and P. G. Cressey, the “sociology of democratic planning” of K. Mannheim and the systematic distinction between formal, informal and non-formal education emerging from P. Coombs’, M. Ahmed’s and T. Labelle’s contributions. These perspectives can serve as snapshots useful for identifying standpoints that animate the contemporary debate on the “continuum in education”.