---
title: "Network of Learning (18)"
created: 2026-07-01
updated: 2026-07-01
type: concept
status: compiled
namespace: pattern-language
pattern_number: 18
pattern_name: "Network of Learning"
source_repository: https://github.com/zenodotus280/apl-md
source_url: https://github.com/zenodotus280/apl-md/blob/master/Patterns/Network%20of%20Learning%20%2818%29.md
license_note: Non-commercial reuse with attribution; see namespace README and source LICENSE.md.
related_patterns:
  - "Home Workshop (157)"
  - "Children in the City (57)"
  - "Children's Home (86)"
  - "Shopfront Schools (85)"
  - "Teenage Society (84)"
  - "University as a Marketplace (43)"
  - "Master and Apprentices (83)"
---

# Network of Learning (18)

> Source pattern from the abridged `apl-md` corpus. Use as a design reference and constraint seed; do not treat as commercial-clean training data.

### Problem
>In a society which emphasizes teaching, children and students—and adults—become passive and unable to think or act for themselves. Creative, active individuals can only grow up in a society which emphasizes learning instead of teaching.

### Solution
>Instead of the lock-step of compulsory schooling in a fixed place, work in piecemeal ways to decentralize the process of learning and enrich it through contact with many places and people all over the city: workshops, teachers at home or walking through the city, professionals teaching younger children, museums, youth groups traveling, scholarly seminars, industrial workshops, old people, and so on.
>Conceive of all these situations as forming the backbone of the learning process; survey all these situations, describe them, and publish them as the city’s "curriculum"; then let students, children, their families and neighborhoods weave together for themselves the situations that comprise their “school” by paying as they go with standard vouchers, raised by community tax.
>Build new educational facilities in a way which extends and enriches this network.

### Related Patterns
... another network, not physical like transportation, but conceptual and equal in importance, is the network of learning: the thousands of interconnected situations that occur all over the city, and which in fact compromise the city's "curriculum": the way of life it teaches to its young.

Above all, encourage the formation of seminars and workshops in people's homes -- [[Home Workshop (157)]]; make sure that each city has a "path" where young children can safely wander on their own -- [[Children in the City (57)]]; build extra public "homes" for children, one to every neighborhood at least -- [[Children's Home (86)]]; create a large number of work-oriented small schools in those parts of town dominated by work and commercial activity -- [[Shopfront Schools (85)]]; encourage teenagers to work out a self-organized learning society of their own -- [[Teenage Society (84)]]; treat the university as scattered adult learning for all the adults in the region -- [[University as a Marketplace (43)]]; and use the real work of professionals and tradesmen as the basic nodes in the network -- [[Master and Apprentices (83)]].

---

> [!cite]- Alexander, Christopher. _A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction_. Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 99
> #APL/confidence/medium
>
> #APL/Town-Patterns/Community-Networking