When the Market Is the Social Studies Classroom: On Rhizomatic Learning and the Education of Street Vendors' Children

Abstract

This article examines the learning characteristics of children of street vendors in Chum Saeng District, Nakhon Sawan Province, at the primary education level. The author employs the concept of the "Rhizome" developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as the principal framework for understanding this phenomenon, given that the learning of these children does not follow a singular pathway as presupposed by mainstream education, but instead branches out in multiple directions simultaneously—through commercial spaces, transnational family relationships, and unique capabilities that are not accounted for in the social studies curriculum. Drawing on field data and analysis through the principles of connection, qualitative multiplicity, and multiplicity itself, the author finds that these children already possess capital in citizenship, economic, and public-space knowledge in their daily lives. However, this knowledge capital is often overlooked or undervalued, not because it does not exist, but because it does not appear in forms that the educational system can recognize or "read." This phenomenon raises the question of whether what the system terms "knowledge deficiency" may, in fact, be merely a limitation of the system itself in perceiving knowledge that exists in alternative forms. This article therefore proposes that social studies teachers should develop competency in "reading rhizomatic learning" in order to meaningfully connect learners' out-of-classroom experiences to the learning management process—not merely as marginal supplementary information, but as a knowledge domain of equal weight to that prescribed by the curriculum.