The Properties of Locke's Common-Wealth of Learning

This article reads the educational implications of ‘intellectual property’ that are found in the double meaning of property, as the word refers to an economic right and a quality of being. It briefly visits the seventeenth-century origins of this double concept of intellectual property (IP), with particular attention paid to John Locke (who provides the basis of IP as a personal possession as well as furthering the idea of a ‘common-wealth of learning’) and the emergence of ‘open science’. The argument proceeds on two levels, educational and public, as it draws parallels between the way that students are taught to regard learning and the way in which a knowledge-based global economy treats learning. On the first level, that of the personal, the article puts forward a critique of the common educational tendency to treat learning as a private good, in terms of personal asset management, which ultimately undermines the common-wealth of learning and the idea of knowledge as a public good. On the second level, that of the public sphere, the article turns to the increasing privatization and capitalization of knowledge that is making inroads into the common-wealth of learning, particularly around publicly funded research and scholarship. The article considers the prospects, finally, of ‘open’ responses (e.g. open access, open source, etc.) to reassert the vital role of the common-wealth, through new technologies of knowledge sharing, and it considers the educational policy implications of preparing a new generation of students who, as they are prepared to participate in knowledge-based economies, should also understand the implications of sustaining the common-wealth of learning.