When is Free Speech Too Free?

So when exactly did classroom teachers start thinking that the content of their lessons were top secret? I have always posited that my students will take my words, both oral and written, to any number of outside parties, including parents, friends, faculty, and administrators. In addition, students often tape my lectures, and I in no way feel threatened by being put on the record professionally. The fact that people are hyperventilating about some student "spying" on his teacher merely because he taped a lesson tells me that many instructors have a hell of a lot to hide.

  — Federal Dog - 12 March '06 - 13:24

Perhaps, Mr. Federal Dog, you have no intellectual property worth protecting. If I were a teacher/professor, and I spent considerable time perfecting my art, and I delivered a lecture that was recorded and reprinted or sold without my permission, I would consider that a legal harm. I would protect my interests to the full extent allowed by law. The fact that young Allen used his recording for the advancement of his personal agenda is beside the point. Before you suggest that because Bennish or Churchill do not own their work product, the case law is well-settled on this point. They do. The school system/university may have some interest in the revenues generated as a direct result of faculty lectures, but the lectures (or tirades) belong to the authors. You cannot have it both ways, either you believe in the market or you do not, but a person's intellectual work product should be his alone.

  — John Galt - 13 March '06 - 01:19

Dear Mr. Galt,



Perhaps Bennish is not following district policy on teaching the approved curriculum? If this is the case, then he should be written up and their internal policy concerning employees should be followed concerning termination. If this policy allows certain warnings and procedings so be it.



But he should not be allowed to continue violating the lesson plan.



And just like any employer, the school district owns his work developed while he is working. Not Bennish.



My final point, just in case you didn't notice, Bennish's story and teachings have zero commercial value...........



What I really want to know is, are you really defending Bennish or having a mental excerise surrounding intellectual property?

  — CattleDog - 13 March '06 - 05:57

Mr. Galt,



Your extreme agitation about something as everyday as students' taping a university lecture for study purposes is telling. I have nothing to hide in my classes, and my lectures are sufficiently substantive that taping them helps students review and digest their content. You obviously have a great deal to fear, for some reason. The only question is what is it about your teaching that you are so terrified of people seeing that you reflexively threaten litigation to keep your activities hidden from view?

  — Federal Dog - 13 March '06 - 06:39

What a bunch of bull, Galt. In this instance, who cares who owns what? You're just trying to change the subject.



When Keith Windschuttle exposed some of the best-known Australian historians as, to put it charitably, manuipulators of their sources, the first thing the Australian Historical Association thought to do was ban historians from criticizing each other in print! In that case, too, the historians' "extreme agitation" (as FD put it) over Windschuttle's charges was very telling.

  — jgm () (URL) - 13 March '06 - 10:13

Tenure, the ultimate protection. No wonder the scum of the earth have become teachers.

  — John W. Docker () - 13 March '06 - 11:05

This kid was in PUBLIC high school- i.e., the government owns his work output, (as was said before) and the taxpayer pays for it- Teachers cannot have any expectation of privacy in a public classroom. I think the kid's father would have every right to personally attend every class he would like- the public schools do not have the right to take minors and teach them secretly whatever they want somehow beyond the reach of the parent. This is not that complicated. That concept of "academic freedom" found in private Uni does not apply here.

  — Claire - 13 March '06 - 12:00

Actually, jgm, the scum of the earth have become officers.



If as those of you with M.R.S. degrees in white male studies claim, against copious case law to the contrary, the taxpayers "own" Bennish's output, then I as a taxpayer want him in that classroom putting out even more of the work I paid him for. Money well spent, this taxpayer says. Where can I buy some more people like this Bennish?

  — Winnie - 13 March '06 - 14:16

Winnie, if one could major in white male studies, it would have to be more challenging than a degree in education, the field made up of the lazy underachiever and the honestly dedicated, caring teacher.



Does this mean you don't intend to marry or procreate? Good. Why don't you understand why your M.R.S. comments are so sexist? Are you a slow learner?



"Speaking truth to power"-what an adolescent concept. These people have trouble cutting the apron strings and working out their relationships with their fathers, so they reject everything their parents (or those they see as powerful) value, except their money.

  — laurie () - 13 March '06 - 19:22

Not sexist a'tall, Ms. Laurie. A non-female can major in white male studies as surely as a woman. That was precisely my point. They are married to their fathers, i.e. daddies boys.



I don't speak truth to power, sweet pea. Power knows everything I am saying and more long before I can say it.



I speak truth to people. Do you really think you are "white" Laurie. Don't you know who your ancestors are, or were your beginnings so "low" that yer mommie and daddie wanted to forget all about that business and climb up the ladder of whiteness on the backs of people of color to get far, far away from their low beginnings?



Hmmmm?

  — Winnie - 14 March '06 - 18:29

When you accuse all women, who don't conform their views along your party lines, as having gone to college to become a parasitic prostitute for an educated successful (biologically favorable) husband and learning to live in a "man's world" rather than to fulfill herself as a productive and educated human being in a field of her choosing, you are being sexist. You don't suggest any of the men here are M.R.S. degree holders.



College age is also mating age. That many people find their mate in college is not surprising or bad. But to accuse women of being predatory and ignoring that men are also making a selection from a pool that is presumably biologically favorable (probably moreso than seeking magical power by pretending to be a witch, without so much as a Wiccan Coven or comprehension), is sexist. Get it?



None of this has anything to do with racism or ancestors. You don't yet have any truth to speak to power or people. Further, you don't have the maturity or skill to hold a thought and communicate any truths. Get an education in a real school. Stop lifting half-baked ideas and repeating them badly.

  — laurie - 15 March '06 - 09:32

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