I’m still reading Larry Lessig’s Free Culture, which is excellent so far. In the meantime, while following the Lane Hartwell controversy, I found a link to Lessig’s March, 2007 talk at TED (posted Nov. ‘07).

He ends with a strong emotional appeal about how this controversy is affecting and will continue to affect “kids”:

We made mixed tapes, they remix music. We watched TV, they make TV … We can’t make our kids passive again, we can only make them pirates. And is that good? … We live life constantly against the law … and that’s what we’re doing to our kids. They live life knowing they live it against the law. That realization is extraordinarily corrosive, extraordinarily corrupting. And in a democracy, we ought to be able to do better …

This quote, of course, ties directly to the classroom and many of the reform movements (or at least, reform talks), particularly of the “School 2.0″ crowd. Students are living an engaged, connected, participatory life within a culture that seems to ask for passivity in the classroom and to label them pirates in their own homes.

At any rate, the video is a good primer on some of the issues at stake. My only complaint is that he doesn’t spend enough time talking about ways to achieve the balance for which he argues. Of course, CreativeCommons is a large part of his answer, a sort of “answer-in-action.” Hopefully, Free Culture will reveal more of his thoughts on achieving that balance.

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