Common Ground
Ideas can be more easily transmitted if we already are part of a group with much shared understanding.
A brief quote, once again from What Makes Us Social?:
Education plays a role in the evolution of culture not only because it serves to transmit knowledge, but for another even more fundamental reason: it creates common ground and thus starts a virtuous circle. Ideas can be more easily transmitted if we already are part of a group with much shared understanding.
The somewhat hidden fact that schools currently operate (and no doubt have operated for centuries) as confluences of all kinds of different and perhaps even contradictory purposes is an insightful and important observation. From knowledge transfer to socialization to citizen-making to caretaking to critical thinking to psychological well being . . . schools in the U.S. are essentially repositories of all these purposes in one form or another.
I would argue that a "common ground" covers all of these purposes—indeed, all the purposes that could reasonably be assigned to schools. In some cases, "common ground" means achieving a common foreground (as with knowledge transfer), and in others it means successfully operating—perhaps in varied, individualistic ways—against an already achieved common background (as with personalization and critical thinking).
