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A Teacher Asking Students To Destroy Notes?
zwei2stein writes "I found this question with far-reaching implications in the off-topic section of a forum I frequent: 'My economics teacher is forcing us to give up all of our work for the semester. Every page of notes and paper must be turned over to her to be destroyed to prevent future students from copying it. My binder was in my backpack, and she went into my backpack to take it. Is that legal?' Besides the issue with private property invasion, which was the trigger of that post, there is much more important question: Can a teacher ask a student not to retain knowledge? How does IP law relate to teaching and sharing knowledge? Whose property are those notes?"
Also here's the original posting
> http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10351058
The original poster says this is High School.
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... back in my undergrad days I had an issue with a professor who tried to pull his own stunts, even trying to call me out (while claiming to not know who he was calling out) publically in class. After a conversation with couple of lawyers and a few folks at the university after making a complaint of harassment (me being a white male who at the time was in his early 20's) and which at one point resulting in the university president calling me on my cell personally, it was decided that given the professors work was a paid for by the university, they had effectively no rights to it... so my copious note taking, and eventual whole scale recording of classes what perfectly legitimate and up to the university... and not the individual professor who was being paid to perform for the classes behalf.
As sad as I am to say it... a tape recorder, obvious or not (ideally obvious be it in public or private) can be your best friend... though in my case I also had a laptop recording everything as well.
Let me give you the advice I was given when I was dealing with an overzealous professor who thought they were god in the classroom and eventually was threatening to sue me and the school... talk to a lawyer.
Remember though... I am not a lawyer, I've just talked to a few over this issue and think you should to.
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Ask a lawyer, it could prove interesting. If the lawyer smells a chance of winning a case it may be even more interesting.
But this means that you shall always have a backup of your work. A copying machine will do fine!
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This is a weird situation (in the case of a public University) because arguably most of the money for the lecture comes from the public... but it is not a public forum. The University has the right to restrict the lecture to students who have paid tuition.
However, if you are a student, and you have paid tuition, you have every right to all materials that are presented in that lecture.
My University (after some legal wrangling) recognized this and thereafter allowed the Student Body Association to record (on paper) and sell "official" lecture notes for recurring lectures, and in fact found it to be a valuable educational tool for those who could not take good notes, or could not keep up due to language or coordination problems, etc.
Everybody benefited as a result.
Study is study. Lecture notes do not help people "cheat", except in the sense that they might not have to physically be present at the lecture in order to benefit from them. They still have to read the notes and learn the material. Heck... that's what televised lectures are all about anyway!
(A) Let me know when high schools start having fraternities. The origin of this story was a high school student. But regardless, in the case of colleges:
(B) Frats and so on have been building up files on her class for years already, and will continue to do so. My University found that it was pointless to fight this and allowed the Student Body Association to print and sell copies of "official" lecture notes, approved by the professors, for recurring lectures. As it turned out, it was a very positive thing and everybody benefitted except those who were too poor to spend $10 for a semester's worth of notes.
(C) Yes, self-taken notes belong to the writer.
(D) This is a matter of legal rights, not University rules, so whether the professor is tenured or not is irrelevant. Lawyers and police can nail a tenured professor for theft and invasion as easily as one with no tenure.
(E) "Don't file a police report", my ass. If somebody steals my property, I am going to report it. Again, this is not a matter of rules, it is a matter of the law. The more illegal activities you allow someone to get away with, the more they begin to feel they have the right to do it.
...such as a livescribe pulse, or the like would allow you to capture not just the notes you take during the class, but in some cases the actual audio involved. Each day sync the pen to your computer, post your notes to your web page and blog. At the end of the year turn in the notebook as requested, and for your reference from then on, either look up the data on your web page, or print out the online edition of the notebook.
After the term is graded, and the grades are recorded permanently, publicly thank the teacher for wasting the time you spent in the class, as the notes you took as part of the class are no longer available to refer back to.
From my own experience, I have to admit that perhaps one or two of the classes I took through the various schools that I attended, ever provided me with useful reference material for subsequent classes. In almost all cases the real intent of the class is to learn how to find the answer to the question, and rarely ever has it been strictly having the 'correct' answer.
That applied to being able to demonstrate in the materials turned in for projects that you were able to derive the correct information, or in situations where research on a subject was required, being able to demonstrate that you were able to find resources that support the conclusion you are presenting, or in some cases the ability to propose a conjecture, and demonstrate through the appropriate research that the conjecture is invalid.
The knowledge gained in the process should become a tool you can use that does not rely on the material specific to that course.
In much of the US, high school students are required to take classes in a couple of English classes, some variety of mathematics, a Science class, and a variety of general electives. I strongly suspect that the vast majority of college students have never picked up their high school notebook for one of these classes to refer back to when attempting to understand a topic being discussed in college.
One side effect of this teacher's process very well may be to instruct the student in the value that their notes may have later on, but only if the material is available to them, and reviewed. If you have constructed a means of insuring that your notes are available to you, whether it be with a pen that captures your notes, or if you personally spend time each week transcribing your notes into your computer, or into another notebook, then you will have gained on the availability side, if not on the initiative to review those notes.
Think also of the library at Alexandria. We very well know that we lost significant knowledge of a number of topics as a result of it burning, and have no way of knowing if we have recovered that knowledge, or not.
Server admins have a pretty good idea of the value of having an available backup of the files on the server.
You never know...
If i understand correctly , the problem is the some students cheat by copying over the tests and homework.
All the teacher has to do is give different tests and homework for each class. How hard can that be ? My teachers always worked this way.
I must have been lucky. The teachers at my school spent the entire year preparing my class for the exams. They taught us how to figure out how to answer the questions, and about the topic! They loved it when we wrote down the notes so we could follow up after class and review what they had told us.
Yes, it is cynical, and a very defeatist attitude. Not to sound naive, but freedom is only as dead as you let it become.
Sorry, but the school I went to (sometimes) allowed me the fun game of watching pupils (that is, 13 and 14 year old kids) punching teachers in the face without any kind of retribution, and here comes the fun part, then those same kids would turn around and punch me, while the teacher watches and does nothing.
I am now aware this isn't an entirely normal school experience, but I wasn't at the time. If I was late for class the excuse "Well, my nose is bleeding, I have bruises on my face and twigs in my hair and mud on my clothes from being beaten up and thrown down a hill into a bush, and then I had to limp here" simply would not do. A defeatist attitude may have been to simply curl up into a ball, skip as much class as possible and leave as soon as possible, but instead I took a can-do, proactive approach of trying to do things and to get things done.
For that reason I now cannot think of anyone as innately good unless I've known them for years, can't do formal education or sometimes public places because I still get panic attacks, and am only just learning, six years on, that maybe not everyone starts off in a default position of being amused by my pain. Sometimes, when you actually are defeated, a defeatist attitude is more correctly defined as a realistic attitude.
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... I was eating candy while reading. The librarian came up and demanded that I stop eating in the library and to give her the candy. I said no. She tried to take it away but I grabbed it, said I would put it away and proceeded to put it in my backpack. She tried to grab it from my backpack and I slapped her hand. She looked shocked and walked away. I was 16 or 17 at the time. I suffered zero repercussions due to my actions.
In essence, get a spine. Someone cannot just take your property just because they want it. It doesn't matter if they are in a perceived position of authority. They don't have the right. That is unless you've entered into contract that states that they can. Which you haven't mentioned is the case and is *far* from standard practice at high schools in North America. Not to mention that minors can't enter into contract.
But, at this point, I'd suggest going to the Principle *with your parents* to get this resolved. If they don't budge, then local news outlets are *always* looking for stories. I'm sure they'd be interested in this.
Best is to scan the whole notebook, stash the files away, never mentioning it, then turn in the original.
Then, when you finally finish your contact with the asshole, post the entire content on the net and publish the info on your school website.
And let THEM fight YOU.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Is this in the US? Canada? Europe? It's kind of hard to formulate a legal defense/explanation for this without knowing the jurisdiction. The Internet is Global, what passes muster in one country may be completely alien in another. Please provide more context or a link to the original forum post.
Thank you.
--Mike
Well you can't do anything now since you consented to her taking them by letting her in your backpack. Sounds like you just got a lesson in 4th amendment rights. Never let anyone, including authority figures cop teachers, have your personal property ever. Even if you have nothing to hide.
Of course you can do something. He didn't consent to hand it over, he was tricked into falsely believing that she had the right to it. So making him hand it over fully fits the definition of fraud: Fraud happens when you hand over your property yourself because you were made to believe something which is not true, whereas theft happens when something is just taken away from you illegally. If he believed she had the right to take his notes and handed them over, she committed fraud. If he refused to hand them over and she just took them, then it is theft.
Well, perhaps it's best to remain focused.
Assume the kid had 90 days of class. That's 90 hours.
90 hours * 20 = 1800$
Now, given this is America, and people are entitled to profit from their works, double it to $3600, the value of the notes STOLEN.
That's Grand Theft. Focus on that. The police can get their heads around that.
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I had a professor once try to do a similar thing. He demanded to keep the source code for anything we wrote while in class. Albeit he wasn't about to commit theft and assault. He also had this demand in writing so there was official documentation (not very smart for a professor.) A friend was taking the class too so we decided to license our code very, very restrictively; the polar opposites of GPL an BSD. After grades had been posted at the end of the semester, we went to student legal services with our issue. An actual lawyer heard our case, was absolutely incensed, and wrote a certified letter threatening monetary punishments. The professor decided to settle and immediately handed over all documentation, source code, and binaries back to the students. He even threatened to charge us with academic misconduct. The settlement he signed had a provision that he could not make any such accusations or face civil trial for breech of contract. The professor was given an administrative sanction which became a forced (four month sabbatical.)
This would be a non issue had you typed all your notes. The upside would be:
1. Near infinite backups
2. The priceless look on your teachers face when you told her
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This was a number of years ago before some of the sociopolitical changes that led to TFA's situation.
In my case we agreed to it beforehand.
I was taking advanced organic synthesis, and what we had to do was make a new molecule, something that had never been made before (or, less attractively, had never been made by that particular route.)
I chose to make explosives. My girlfriend at the time chose to make methamphetamines. The teacher talked it over with each of us and we agreed, in writing, before we started, that when we finished the school would confiscate and destroy our notebooks and reports... but they let us do it.
The material we were producing was clearly dangerous, but in both cases they were novel syntheses that fulfilled the criteria for the class project. We knew that the work we were doing was going to be destroyed at the end of the term before we started. It seemed fair to me.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.