> “I must study politics and war that my sons may have
> liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons
> ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography,
> natural history, naval architecture, navigation,
> commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their
> children a right to study painting, poetry, music,
> architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”

I have met many people whose aim of life is painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry or porcelain without “Adam’s basic liberties”. They never studies politics, war or commerce. They may not have “freedom” the way you and Adam define it – sometimes they may even suffer from relative poverty – but many of them are happy, anyway.

I would claim that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is probably a better reference here than Adams. After the basic needs are fulfilled (physiological and safety) people should be “free” to fulfill their higher levels of needs (social, family, esteem by others, creativity) in their own way. And people are doing this (if the OER people are not forcing them to study “politics”, “war”, “natural science”, “philosophy” and “commerce”).

I also have formulate a designers’ maslowian law. It goes like this:

“Design solutions that are fulfilling some higher levels of human needs but same time violating people’s lower level of needs are unethical rubbish.â€?

If putting children to school is a design solution to get them interested in politics, science of war or even poetry (higher levels of needs), will same time mean that they are not anymore contributing to the livelihood of their families (lower level of needs), school is unethical rubbish. If a laptop is giving child a chance to be “creative in a new way” (higher level of needs), but will same time cause problems in the family relations (lower level of needs) the laptop is unethical rubbish (in that context). Wars are most of the time fulfilling higher level of needs (self-esteem, power) and same time violating people’s lower levels of needs (safety). War is rubbish.

> With apologies to Adams, we might rephrase:
> “We must freely share and support basic educational
> materials and interactions, so that others may have the
> liberty to localize these or – inspired by our example –
> may freely share and support their own locally relevant
> materials and interactions, in order to give others aw
> right to learn from these and leverage them in improving
> their own lives, so that yet others may enjoy the
> blessing and privilege of the freedom to argue the
> diction and semantics of the name of the movement.”

With apologies to Maslow we might rephrase:

We must empower people to fulfill their and their communities basic needs, so that they may have the liberty to study and produce artefact which they’ll find relevant for their own life, in order to empower them to solve the further challenges they face in their life.