Parents with significant educational attainments have better insight into the processes of formal learning and the strategies for success at it, and they are more likely to surround their children with intellectual resources and helpful suggestions that prove supportive. In a myriad of subtle ways they pass their experience to their children. Parents who have not been successful in this formal schooling may pass on other kinds of knowledge that largely go unrecognized by the school culture. The challenge before us is to find a means to bring these ways of knowing together and to empower parental influence for all children in the processes of schooling. Throughout the twentieth century, educational and social services have been highly segmented and specialized.
Segmentation is everywhere.
Elementary schools serve children, aged 5 to 12, dividing them all up according to annual age cohorts. So too with the numerous other segments of the learning society high school, middle school, adult education, job training, college, counseling, and so on. Schooling and other community services all occur in separate spaces because the information resources and specialists necessary for each different function have required a distinctive location and deployment. The information technologies of the twenty-first century change these conditions. The resources needed to sustain numerous different educational functions simultaneously in any place of congregation become ubiquitous.