Open Education in the 19th Century

I’m finding myself researching the topic of openness in education and research more and more these days, even when I don’t set out to do it. Tonight while watching an episode of Nova on YouTube called “Absolute Zero“, for example, I was struck by a very interesting historical example.

As the name implies, the episode was devoted to the history of cold research and endeavor, from historical perspectives on cold as a mystical, magical phenomena, to the early periods of research into its nature, through the industrial revolution and on to scientific exploration of the farthest boundaries of absolute zero (-273 degrees Centigrade) and what happens to matter under those conditions.

Dewar and Onnes

The aspect of this that relates to openness in education and research comes roughly halfway through the episode (albeit briefly) during the section on the race to achieve absolute zero.

According to the clip, the two front runners in this race were James Dewar, professor at the Royal Institute in London and Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, professor of experimental physics at the University of Leiden.

Describing the extent of the contrast between the two men (beginning 59:55), the episode indicates:

“Dewar and Onnes could not have been more different. Dewar was very secretive about his work, hiding crucial parts of aparatus from public view before his lectures. Onnes on the other hand, openly shared his lab’s steady progress in a monthly journal.

While I’m still pondering the implications of this excerpt from the standpoint of open education, the example strikes me as important because of the period in which it occurred. The race to produce liquid hydrogen took place beginning in 1891, and was ultimately achieved in 1898. Despite this, the apparent perspectives of Dewar and Onnes on openness, protection of intellectual property (Dewar), and more open sharing of information (Onnes) drew clear parallels with the debate we see today.

In the case of Onnes, in addition to his sharing of the lab’s monthly progress reports, the Wikipedia article on Onnes indicates that in “1904 he founded a very large cryogenics laboratory and invited other researchers to the location, which made him highly regarded in the scientific community.”

As a caveat on this story though, I must say that prior to tonight I hadn’t ever heard of either Dewar or Onnes – and therefore there is a great deal about these two men (and their working styles and histories) that I still know nothing about. The point is that the example of these two men – at least on the surface – bears striking similarities to the contemporary debate on openness and adds an important historical context on the potential origins of open education.

Closing Thoughts

Frequently when I read literature on open education, it’s portrayed as a movement that began in the late 1990s, and is largely fueled by the affordances of computers, social media, and open source sensibilities surrounding open licenses, open content, and mash-ups. What the example of Onnes appears to do is demonstrate that the roots of openness and transparency in education/research, and a willingness to share and engage outside of your lab (or classroom) dates back far further than that.