ABSTRACT
An ambiguity attaches to the word ‘school’ following from different usage in Europe and
North America. In North America, school tends to refer to the total complex of
institutions of formal education, including colleges and universities. When young adults
speak of ‘being in school’ or of ‘going back to school’, it is higher education to which
they are referring. But in Europe school usually refers to the institution devoted to the
education of the child and the young adolescent: school covers the period of compulsory
education and upper secondary schooling, and it is in this sense that Gramsci habitually
uses the Italian equivalent, scuola. As will become evident, it is of importance to
understanding Gramsci’s concept of education as hegemonic that this distinction be
drawn between school as concerned with the education of children and school as
referring to formal education at any level, including institutions for the education of
adults.
