ABSTRACT
Despite the Illich furore, the principles of ‘deschooling’ have been applied for years in the rural parts of the low-income world. Where the formal elementary school has not been able to provide either a vehicle for basic education on a wide scale (e.g. in many parts of Africa), or where the returns from mass elementary schooling in terms of skills and attitudes conducive to development are increasingly questioned (e.g. in several Caribbean countries and Malaysia), the emergence of parallel systems of informal education is an accepted fact.
