In the article Conspiracy Theory, suggested for reading in a recent E-News, Nehring pointed out the damage that the “Manufacturing Metaphor” has created, when applied to schools and schooling in a post-industrial society.

The idea that kids are products and that schools are factories is damaging, because “the intellectual and social development of children is vastly more complex than the production of goods and, to the extent that we think of schools in this way, we diminish the conditions for learning.” He posits the need for a new metaphor for education and suggests that of agrarian, pre-industrial society, using language like “nurturing”, “cultivating” and “tending the flock”.

While nurturing is undoubtedly a better thing to be doing to kids than machining, can't we think of a better metaphor for a post-industrial world than a pre-industrial one?

Besides, there is a lot in agricultural production that we probably don't want to do in schools: weeding, pruning, thinning out, getting rid of the dead wood, for example. Gardening in many ways is brutal and elitist.

Perhaps it could be more fruitful to use a computer network as our metaphor. It suits the times and it has a language that is inclusive, productive and empowering.

A network is created through linking nodes. In the technical jargon, from Wikipedia:

Every node must have a MAC address or Data Link Control address[1] if it is at least an OSI model layer 2 device. Nodes can be computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), cell phones, or various other network appliances, such as routers, switches, and hubs. Nodes that actively route data for the other networked devices as well as themselves are called supernodes.

In human terms, every node is an individual, and every node has a purpose. The nodes are programmed to filter, classify and perform functions on incoming information.

Networks encourage inclusivity, they get better the more nodes are attached, as witnessed by Metcalfe's law. What is that?

From Wikipedia again.

Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n2). First formulated by Robert Metcalfe in regard to Ethernet, Metcalfe's law explains many of the network effects of communication technologies and networks such as the Internet and World Wide Web.

So are kids nodes, and teachers super nodes?

Let's think about an example, comparing what a functioning node, say an email server, does and compare how it would work as a metaphor for teaching and learning.

The email server is connected to a network that sends it data and it works by filtering, classifying and then doing something useful.

First the mail server filters the data. It works out what is likely to be spam or a virus and stops it going any further. In our society, so buried in information, filtering is an essential tool for our kids. They need to be able to judge the validity and source of information before they do anything with it. A lot of the data our kids get is junk and should be treated as such.

Then our mail server classifies the filtered data. It uses a taxonomy system to split the incoming data in useful ways – like sorting into separate mailboxes. These skills of classification are critical to learning how to be able to cope with the mountains of data we process each day.

The final step for our mailserver is to do something with filtered, classified data. It runs installed functions that allow it to do meaningful things – like send the email account holder a notification that there is new mail and build the data into a webmail interface so that they can login and act on it.

So, when teaching, are we installing these functions into kids? Are we giving them tools that allow them to do useful things with the information that bombards them?

We could think of the 16 Habits of Mind as higher order filters or functions that we are installing into kids. They guide how students interpret and interact with information and what they do as a result.

What happens to the network metaphor when something goes wrong? When a node (a kid) isn't functioning properly, maybe it (s/he) has a 'virus' , or is swamped by input.

Under the manufacturing metaphor you would use a statistical approach to measure widgets' (kids') production quality. Those that didn't meet the standard would be dumped or shunted off to factory seconds stores.

With the language of agriculture the struggling plant (kid) is thinned out – uprooted and chucked on the compost.

But using the network metaphor, we know that the more nodes linked up and working well, the better. We need every node fixed and we have to find the tools to do it.

We can fix malfunctioning nodes. We can switch them on, reboot them, reprogram them and upgrade them. We give them better filters, better taxonomies and improved functions, so that they can deal with the data being thrown at them and use it for productive and creative lives.