 Making Connections: Children, Technology, and the National Grid for LearningJo Moran-Ellis and Geoff Cooper Sociological Research Online, 2000, vol. 5, issue 3, 46-57 Abstract: Late in 1997 the UK Government launched ‘Connecting the Learning Society’ (CtLS) as the first concrete step in instituting a ‘National Grid for Learning’ which will connect schools (and other sites and institutions) to an ‘information superhighway’. This paper presents a textual analysis of CtLS which examines the ways in which technology and the child are presented. We find that CtLS relies on conventional constructions of children as learners and future adults and that, in parallel with this, its treatment of technology is schematic and articulated with and in terms of ‘the future’. The transformation of society, and the arrival of a new socio?technical future, are taken as certain. We argue, on the one hand, that a vision is propounded in which the Grid is seen as transcendent, in that it will have a major impact regardless of the social relations in the context of use; but on the other, that a careful reading of the text reveals a concern with generating alliances, enrollments and trajectories which act as a kind of infrastructure for this vision. We conclude with some thoughts on the wider set of cultural assumptions that frame the document and which help to buttress its plausibility. Keywords: Children; Determinism; Education; ICT; Networks; Technology (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socres:v:5:y:2000:i:3:p:46-57 DOI: 10.5153/sro.525 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Sociological Research Online |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.