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The good men may do separately, is small compared with what they may do collectively.

— Benjamin Franklin

One of the misleading things about attributing greatness to a person is that we often give too much credit. Thomas Edison is credited with over 1000 patents, and yet most of his inventions were the result of a collaborative process. This fact should not detract from what Thomas Edison accomplished. He gets too much credit for his inventions; however, I believe he does not get enough credit for the pioneer he was in making invention a systematic, collaborative process. His laboratory at Menlo Park in New Jersey was the pivot point in history where invention itself became a collaborative process on a massive scale. Prior to Menlo Park, an inventor would work primarily alone or with only one or two assistants. Edison, however, collaborated with up to sixty mechanists and experimenters at Menlo Park. Edison’s greatness was their greatness too.

Collaboration is an important component of the learning process. Collaboration is more than the sum of the knowledge of the group, because it also reduces errors of thought. Errors of fact and opinion get vetted in the collaborative process, because when we collaborate with others, we calibrate the correctness of what we know. The open-source principle of Linus’s Law states that, “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” This is the underlying principle that leads to invention, scientific breakthroughs, medical advances, and even successful free market societies. Together we can solve almost any problem — individually, almost none.

Collective expertise trumps individual knowledge. Benjamin Franklin understood this more than most. Everywhere Franklin went he made acquaintances with interesting and thoughtful people—usually thinkers and avid readers like he was. Moreover he would habitually and instinctively lead his social groupings in activities designed to improve the minds of those in the group. The first known instance of this was his debates as a boy with another “bookish lad,” John Collins. Sometimes their debates would be done in the form of letters, which, combined with Franklin’s improvement schemes, was key in his becoming a better writer.

Keenly aware of, and perhaps bitter about his lack of formal education, Franklin was always consciously trying to improve his mind. As a printer in Philadelphia Franklin formed an organization called the Junto, which met for the purpose of improving the minds and social standing of the members. There was no tuition to be a member of the Junto, making it a model for the open-source education concept. As Walter Isaacson put it, “the Junto existed to discuss issues of the day, debate philosophical topics and devise schemes for self-improvement.” The Junto was not only a place to share reading lists, but also of action. Franklin, along with his Junto, created the first lending library in the colonies, the first fire company, and helped establish a university for the “education of youth in Pennsylvania,” which later became known as the University of Pennsylvania.

Later, when postmaster for the colonies, Franklin took his Junto concept and formed the American Philosophical Society which was created for “promoting useful knowledge among the British plantations in America” and included scientists and thinkers from other colonies. Although it had a slow start, it is in existence today and the mission listed on its website reads, in part, as follows:

The American Philosophical Society’s current activities reflect the founder’s spirit of inquiry, provide a forum for the free exchange of ideas, and convey our conviction that intellectual inquiry and critical thought are inherently in the best interest of the public.

Franklin understood that there is a social aspect to learning and did his best to seek out or create collaborative learning environments wherever he went.

A collaborative learning environment draws its strength, not from its curriculum, per se, but from the aptitudes and knowledge of its members. The appeal of Harvard, for instance, is not any particular course of study. That can be easily duplicated. It is its stringent admissions process that ensures that only accomplished learners can attend. While Harvard dilutes the quality of its environment somewhat by admitting 40 percent of its legacy applicants compared to only 11 percent of its overall applicants, its applications process is very selective. This makes high quality collaborations more likely, especially since teachers are in essence collaborators as well. Stanford graduates Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard met at Stanford and went on to form HP. Their collaborative learning environment was less Stanford and more their own personal relationship which was institutionalized in their own company — HP. A similar modern day example would be the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin who also met at Stanford. Now their learning is focused around Google’s mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Again, their collaborative group was more each other than Stanford, which is just a place. The founders of Google institutionalized their group dynamic in Google the company, which has now 5,680 employees/collaborators.

A collaborative group like the Junto can have an advantage over any formal academic university, because most students think of higher education as a four to eight year commitment. For Franklin learning was lifelong. With his guidance, the Junto met and stayed in touch for nearly forty years. Of the Junto, Franklin states that it “was the best school of philosophy, morality, and politics that then existed in the province; for our queries, which were read the week preceding their discussion, put us upon reading with attention upon the several subjects, that we might speak more to the purpose.”

Franklin’s learning inclination was inspired by several books, and from his experience with the Puritan practices, which stress meetings and self-congregation. Franklin was also exposed to the Enlightenment in London as a teenager and did his part to bring its practices back to Philadelphia. In London, during the Enlightenment, people would frequently congregate at coffeehouses to discuss politics, philosophy and to read. These coffeehouses were called “penny universities,” because for the price of a cup of coffee you could get an education. Franklin visited these coffeehouses frequently and when he came back to Philadelphia, he and his club mates initially met, although in a tavern instead of a coffeehouse. Coffeehouses in London also served liquor as well as coffee, so it’s not as big a transition as it might seem.

It may be funny to some that a medium for the Enlightenment in America was Taverns, but this is where, like coffeehouses in London, citizens met to discuss the politics and philosophy of the day. Franklin and his Junto initially met in a tavern, although they would later rent a house. In 1776, as the break from England loomed, delegates of the 2nd Continental Congress would weigh many critical decisions about independency at City Tavern in Philadelphia according to John Adams. And, as any Marine can tell you, the Marine Corps itself, was founded at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia. This probably has less to do with the lore that taverns were hotbeds for fighters and brawlers, than because taverns were simply the place where thoughtful citizens who understood the issues of the day were likely to be found.

While the Junto is the model for the collaborative aspect of open-source education, it is not the only one of its kind. This format can be used as a follow on to a formal education. The best example of an open-source education collaboration post-graduation is Albert Einstein and his Olympia Academy.

In an attempt to make ends meet while waiting for a job, Einstein placed an ad in the paper offering tutoring in math and physics. “Trial lessons free” the ad proclaimed. I wonder how many people would today jump at this opportunity knowing what we do about Albert Einstein. Maybe every living person. Back in 1902 though, only Maurice Solovine came knocking on Einstein’s door. After all, it wasn’t a chance to meet someone famous — Einstein wasn’t – it was simply a chance to learn. They hit it off immediately. In his biography of Einstein, Walter Isaacson writes:

The first discussion lasted almost two hours, after which Einstein followed Solovine into the street, where they talked for a half-hour more. They agreed to meet the next day. At the third session, Einstein announced that conversing freely was more fun than tutoring for pay. “You don’t have to be tutored in physics,” he said. “Just come see me when you want and I will be glad to talk with you.” They decided to read the great thinkers together and then discuss their ideas.

In this way, Einstein’s education after college continued. Later joined by Conrad Habicht, another math and physics enthusiast, they dubbed themselves the “Olympia Academy” to poke fun of elite institutions.

The discussions and activities that took place in the Olympia Academy led directly to Einstein’s intellectual breakthroughs and his miracle year in 1905. They studied the works of such Enlightenment thinkers as Ernst Mach, Immanuel Kant, Baruch Spinoza, and David Hume. Meeting several times a week, this learning collaboration helped Einstein herald in the greatest scientific revolution since Isaac Newton, made him internationally famous, and made his name synonymous with genius. At the time he wrote the papers though, he was merely a patent clerk who collaborated with his newfound friends to improve their minds.

Some of the best collaborative learning environments do cost money, like Harvard and Stanford. Others, like the Junto and the Olympia Academy are free. Profound learning can occur in both social groupings. The economics are just different.

There is a third kind of learning environment where students can learn AND make money at the same time – businesses. Not every business has a culture of learning, but the ones that do, are more likely to adapt to changing environments. Thomas Edison’s laboratory at Menlo Park is an example that has been previously mentioned. My favorite example, as a student of learning, a student of art, and as a fan of their work, is the Walt Disney Company.

Although Walt himself did not graduate high school, he was intensely focused on learning, and went to great lengths to self-direct his education. He would actually skip classes at his regular high school to attend classes at a nearby art school. As the Disney Company grew, it became apparent that a culture of learning was an absolute necessity. Disney biographer Neal Gabler writes:

. . .the animators simply were not good enough. To meet the new standards for realism, they knew they had to improve their skills. “I definitely feel that we cannot do the fantastic things based on the real unless we first know the real,” Walt had advised. They needed training. As early as 1929 Walt would drive several of his animators to downtown Los Angeles to attend Friday night classes at the Chouinard Art Institute, then go to the studio to work, and then return to pick them up. Sometime in 1931 he contracted with Chouinard to train a dozen or so of his artists one night a week. One of them, Art Babbitt, decided that it would be more efficient for the artists to gather at his house near the Hollywood Bowl for informal drawing sessions with live models, and in the late summer or early fall of 1932 he began hosting these get-togethers. The first week he invited the fourteen, and twenty-two appeared. . .[A]nother young animator who had been attending the sessions at Babbit’s house, Hardie Gramatky, suggested they formalize the instruction by inviting the man who had conducted the Chouinard classes, Donald Graham, to serve as the teacher. Babbitt contacted Graham, and on November 15 the “great Disney Art School,” as Graham called it, held its first class.

At first the group met on the soundstage just two evenings a week, with twenty to thirty men in attendance. Within a month the numbers had swelled, compelling Graham to call in another instructor, Phil Dike, and divided the class in two. Over the next two years weekly attendance averaged better than fifty per session, and Graham occasionally had to enlist a third instructor to accommodate the group. Soon they were meeting five nights a week, and though attendance initially was not mandatory, as Babbitt put it, “you’d better go!”

Of course all these animators, in addition to the collaboration on their studies, would have to collaborate on their actual work as well. Animation is so labor intensive that it can’t be done any other way. Snow White alone took about 250,000 drawings and two hundred years worth of man-hours. It’s possible to work for a company that collaborates on the work but does not collaborate on the intellectual development of its people. The key is to only look for a job at a company, like Disney, that does both.

At this point hopefully you’re sold on the concept that collaboration is essential to meaningful learning. If collaboration can help a printer become a scientist, and help a patent clerk revolutionize physics, perhaps it can help the rest of us also. If you can’t attend a school or have finished with school, the best thing you can do is to start your own collaborative learning group to further your education. All you need to do is gather at least one other like-minded person to get started. Where and how far you take this kind of education is up to you.

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