Jefferson on Education

Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, author of Remix, says that "we measure education by how well writing is learned. As I've already noted, this is a profoundly democratic feature of our creative culture: we tell everyone they should learn how to speak as well as how to listen." Not only how to speak well and listen well, but to articulate arguments well. To "remix" an idea, so to speak, to create your own. You can believe in intellectual property, as Shepard Fairey does to defend his use and re-use of an AP photograph for his iconic Obama portrait, but also believe in the ability to share ideas without lessening yours.

Thomas Jefferson, no stranger to democratic features, puts it quite lyrically in an 1813 letter: "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature..."

A great article in Wired by Daniel Roth illustrates the power of Geeks in reforming and remixing education. By owning their own schooling and teaching, they become "possessed," and excel in their academics, especially their reading and writing. The same demographic that usually graduates 50% of its students in traditional public schools, instead graduates 100% from an exemplar "Geek" high school, High Tech High.