The school in a hyper-connected world. Nets instead of walls?

Abstract

This article starts by asking about the validity and sense of school in the contemporary world, in particular about the relationships with the transformations that have affected the subjectivities and the bodies for which this institution was originally conceived, and whose relationships are now conflictive, especially due to the strong influence performed by the digital devices of communication and information. The hypothesis is that the school, conceived as a “technology”, is not compatible with the bodies and the subjectivities of today’s youngsters, whose forms of being and staying in the world are more connected to the devices characteristics of contemporary world: not only social nets, e-mails, and cell phones, but also GPS’s, credit cards, and programs of enterprise fidelity. The author concludes by asking about the capacity of the school to resist such a mutation, and whether that old structure will be in conditions to adapt to the new rules of game, transforming into an effective and interesting device to produce the bodies and the subjectivities that we wish.