Revision 2 as of 2005-01-28 13:02:41

FreeEducation

We all understand that education forms the base of our prosperity. However, artificial scarcity of educational content causes objectionable side effects. Making educational content free as in freedom, instead of scarce, solves this problem and we should start working on it right away, today.

Unhindered availability of educational content can cause economic growth and higher welfare standards. It can put an end to starvation and benefits all nations. It is also an important tool to fight ignorance, extremism, women and racial discrimination and even terrorism without raising guns.

There is no need to explain the importance and meaning of free access to educational content further, this is out of the scope for now. The difference with existing systems is the special meaning of the word Free and the related social consequences.

Remarks

If this is a paper version please be aware of the url at "http://vrijschrift.org/free-education/":http://vrijschrift.org/free-education/
If you want to become involved consider joining the following mail list: http://mailman.vrijschrift.org/listinfo/freelearning

So what is the special meaning of Free?

It is not about the fact that downloading is gratis, that is often just a coincidence and a pleasant side effect. Creating it however can cost money. Creating it is always an economical effort.
The word Free is used in the same way as it is used in Free Software. Free is about freedom, about the freedom to copy it, study it, redistribute it and change it. A special license guarantees those freedoms.

Is this revolutionary?

Absolutely not. Through the history of mankind all innovations, inventions and all other creations of the mind are cumulative. We build further on the work of our predecessors and ancestors by adding a little effort every time, improving ideas, removing mistakes, make the structure more logical, etc.. It is very important for everybody, and in particular politicians, to understand that this principle brought us welfare and prosperity. This principle is simple and as old as mankind! It is certainly not a revolution. But... Some government people seem to have forgotten this principle and some organizations seem to help government people forgetting it, because they benefit artificial scarcity: the stationaries are disrupting this principles.

How does it work?

This page is cumulative too. I wrote this page and I invite you to change it, improve it. Maybe your English is better, maybe you feel the need to clarify some parts. Go ahead! Change it! But... You may not change the license of this page, we want to keep this page free as in freedom. See below. This is the same principle as with Free Software (Free Software is not Open Source Software). It is efficient and highly remunerative.So I may do whatever I want with this text? More or less: Yes! You may think it is strange you are free to copy this. The opposite is true, information should always be as free as possible.

When artificial scarcity comes in...

So information should always be free as in Freedom. However there are only a few exceptions to this rule (copyright, patents, trade marks,...). But some people want us to think that copying is a dirty word, that information should not be free, but owned as if information is something material like a house or a car. Obvious it gives power to software vendors, publishers and record labels. Don't believe their arguments in first instance, in general they don't act in your interest. You never steal ideas, you just use them without making known errors, you improve them. Hey, this is called evolution! By the way, when somebody says to you that you have stolen his idea, ask them where they did steal "their" idea... One final remark: we are not against copyright and patents. Sometimes they serve society in an economical way, and then - only then - it is worth to loose a little bit of freedom. But mankind always have to strike a balance between knowledge creation and the use of knowledge, a balance between "protection" and freedom.
Back on track: a special license deals with Free Software. This is the General Public License (GPL). It uses copyright to achieve the opposite, the freedoms mentioned before. This funny - but effective - construction is nicknamed copyleft licensing (do you understand why?). It is intended for software. For manuals there is a license called the GNU Free Documentation License. It is an equivalent of the GPL. We are not 100% sure this is the preferred license for Free Educational Content, but we are convinced this is the right spirit to create an explosion of published knowledge for everyone. On "http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html":http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html you can read more about it.

Is it realistic?

There is a complete community standing behind the idea. For software it works, but can it be used for education? The answer is yes! At this moment (2005) we have been witnessing an information explosion in only a few years called wikipedia (at "http://wikipedia.org":http://wikipedia.org). It is the most powerful and free (as in freedom) encyclopedia on earth. Their momentum was so massive that even smaller projects on language level, like the Dutch wikipedia (at "http://wikipedia.nl":http://wikipedia.nl), showed a similar information explosion in a short time (please take a look at the license terms at the bottom of the pages, when you visit wikipedia). Without doubt Free Educational Content has the future. If only 1 per mille of the teachers are willing to help, that is enough to create an incredible amount of free school books.

What should governments do?

In general governments can serve as catalysts.
If we look at Free Software it took 20 years to get where we are now. If it takes another 20 years to give Free Education a fixed place in our society we have lost at least 15 years enjoying it. Governments can speed up this concept. Keep the following in mind: if the community spends one Euro it gets back ten Euro's. Now that is an interesting investment!
However it is very important to do business with the right people from community driven organizations - like the international part of the Vrijschrift.org Foundation or the Free Software Foundation Europe (the FreE-learning Project is a consortium of these two organizations)- in order to get in contact with the community itself. We think this is really important because we also see failure and capital - tax - destruction when it comes to stimulating Free and Open Source Software.
Digital books are a first aim.
Governments can also help by funding the development of smart database driven information chunk systems. Such a system makes it possible to better (re)use free chunks and combine chunks into free lessons, semester programs, different combinations of chunks (is different free books), etc..
Also there is an immense cultural gap between the people from community driven organizations and a complete ignorant and unaware generation of teachers, government people and politicians (no offense). This is a real challenge.

What are the main pros and cons?

Costs of books will be decreased dramatically, education is more available
Downloads are truly free
Older people may have some problems learning from the screen
There are higher computer costs, negative for the environment
There is almost no need for paper, positive for the environment
Physical overload of children - caused by daily carrying too much schoolbooks - is history
Unhindered access to non plain copyrighted and structured information also increases the knowledge level of individuals and society as a whole