The Concept of a ‘Networked Common School’

The current educational arrangements of advanced liberal democracies continue to isolate various ethnic and racial groups. Disadvantaged minority students attend inferior schools. The overreliance on the curriculum as a design for teaching and learning renders school learning less relevant for 'knowledge work' jobs in network societies. The concept of a 'networked common school' addresses these problems. It envisions linking local schools in a social network mediated by networked computers. Teaching and learning will continue to take place at local sites, but significant face-to-face, inter-group learning will take place at regional learning centers, to be followed up by virtual group learning at distributed local sites. In this article I offer a reconstructive proposal for metropolitan education in the computer network era.(1) I focus on the growing isolation of poor racial and ethnic minority students in many metropolitan regions, and the potential of computer networks to alleviate it. I introduce a philosophical framework for engendering in-person, inter-group learning activities at regional sites, and sustaining them in 'virtual groups' at distributed local school sites.(2)