Open access and peer to peer architectures are not sufficient conditions to actually achieve equitable peer to peer outcomes.

Witness this proposed education reform, which wants to convert students into shareholders, with students and parents attempting to turn a profit based on educational results, which appeared on John Robb’s resilience site, miiu site. Obviously no matter how ‘open’, many will find the idea of introducing competition for money in schools to be the antithesis of what education should be about. It’s a hyper-neoliberal proposal because it attempts to turn even learning efforts and results into commodities, and introduces internal competition between student teams. As far as I’m concerned this is a nightmarish proposal.

Here are some reactions from the p2p foundation’s mailing list:

Karl Robillard:

“I usually associate openness with the concept of equal access, but that’s a bad thing to do. As Martin and Devin were pointing out in another thread, open designs do not guarantee access to resources. It’s why Stallman prefers the word ‘free’ rather than ‘open’, right? Being open is just one part of the equation. We must articulate the others.

Openness and peer-based architectures provide opportunity for equitable outcomes, but its the choices of people who engage with open systems that ultimately decide this. Openness in one aspect of society does not mean openness in others. A propertarian will try to leverage an open system to obtain more property. This is why I don’t really see the point of open-source currencies. Replacing one monetary system with another doesn’t change the underlying dynamics of domination. We could also have open-source atom bombs. Intent and outcomes matter.”

Phoebe Moore writes:

“This is an example of the poison that’s beginning to infect education across the world and a worry I’ve expressed in my published work in a number of instances. The kind of crap the article you’ve forwarded to the list talks about attempts to eliminate any hope of wisdom that develops over time and with careful reading and thinking, i.e. scholarship and critical thinking; for an understanding that teachers really do know more than share-holding students. This is not a gesture toward democracy as the story will tell you, it’s a crack in the door to complete subsumption to capitalism. It pains me to say that I’m sometimes not sure whether the next generations will be educated at all except into learning that the world is about competition and if you can’t fight (unless we as educators continue to resist it), give up early and let the bullies win because it’s easier. Forget widening participation and different learning styles and capacities. Just back to the neo Darwinian nonsense. Propaganda is about education after all.”