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Ownership Without Collaboration is an Illusion
Why True Learning Emerges in a Shared Maker Space.
Ownership is often confused with individualism, as if students only own their learning when they do everything on their own. This idea aligns with Ayn Rand, who saw autonomy and self-reliance as the highest values. But learning and creating are not solitary journeys. In a maker space, where thinking and doing come together, ownership truly emerges through interaction with others.
John Dewey already recognized this: education is not about simply transferring knowledge but about gaining experience in a social context (Dewey, 1938). Hannah Arendt also emphasized that the world gains meaning only through interaction with others (Arendt, 1958). In a maker space, this is exactly what happens. Anyone who has ever been in one knows that knowledge is not formed in isolation, but in conversation, in the shared process of testing and improving prototypes, and in exchanging insights. Ownership without collaboration? It doesn’t exist.
Autonomy vs. Interaction
Rand’s objectivism suggests that progress comes from individuals who separate themselves from the crowd and build purely on their own strength (Rand, 1957). This idea is compelling: the solitary genius who creates something new against the grain. But in…
