Wired For The Future

Christiansburg, Va.

From an aged armchair in a converted 1920's-era school building, Larry Arrington tosses out words and phrases like "T-1 lines," "modems," and "I.S.D.N." with abandon as he describes the future of communications that lies just over the horizon for the Montgomery County, Va., public schools.

He spins a vision, larded with the jargon of the "information age," about the district's plan for a "virtual school system" in which the lines of demarcation between home and school, between the information-rich world outside the classroom and the information-poor environment inside, will largely disappear, thanks...