Re: No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful.

She would have known that narcotics are illegal, and thus be reacting according to her knowledge. She did not know anything about Linux or the software in question - thus a heavy-handed reaction to the kid in question, followed by threats of legal action against a third party, are not appropriate reactions for *anyone*. In particular, someone with a "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude has no business being involved in teaching.

As I say, ignorance is understandable and excusable (assuming it is not part of the subjects she teaches) - hysterical reaction in ignorance is not excusable.

Haven't been keeping up with modern "education" have you? They suspend & expel kids now for things like wearing a fireman's costume on Halloween with a toy plastic fire axe, or bringing a table knife to school to use with your lunch. Not to mention the "sexual harrassment" by 6 year olds. The modern educational establishment is run by people with zero common sense and a whole lot of political correctness.

Jerry

And having a baseball bat in their car. A miniature one on a trophy. A trophy given by that same school.

She also knew that software was copyright and that handing out free copies is illegal. That in this case it just so happened that the copyright license allowed such redistribution was as if the crack handed out happened to have a chemical formula which brought it outside the narcotics laws. She was ignorant, but that ignorance is not outrageous, nor malicious.

The kid was disrupting the class.

Sorry, I pointed out what her assumptions were. Under thos assumptions both actions were appropriate and sensible. Had she discovered that a third party was telling kids to distribute copies of Microsoft Word to everyone, her actions would have been appropriate in both cases.

Nuts. Teachers are people trying to do a tough job with little knowledge (my father's first teaching job after he had gotten advanced placement in Science was history, because the school happened to need a history teacher and not a science teacher.) And like in war, the luxury of deliberation is often not there.

Now, where exactly is the hysterical reaction? As I have pointed out to you, on the basis of her assumptions all of her actions are reasonable. That those assumptions happened to be wrong makes her guilty of ignorance, not of unreasonableness (or hysteria).

I don't live in the USA (I live in Norway), so I can't claim to be an expert on American education. That's part of why I won't pass judgement on the teacher in this thread based on anything other than what I know from her published emails.

What I do hear about regarding American schools is things like "zero tolerance" (a.k.a. "zero thought", or, as you say, "zero common sense") with young children being arrested or expelled for having a screwdriver in their schoolbags, or swearing at a teacher. The other common topic I hear about is when people insist on teaching "intelligent design" (a.k.a. "creationism") in science classes. Perhaps I am being naive, but I like to assume that these sorts of things are some of the worst features of the USA education system, rather than giving an overall picture.

As I have said in each post, ignorance is not the problem (unless she should have known better, based on her subjects).

I saw no indication of that in the things I read - I have assumed that this went on during a break or similar pause when kids have a chance to chat together.

Clearly if a kid is disrupting a class, this should be dealt with appropriately - and confiscating the materials involved until the end of the school day may well have been appropriate.

No, sending a legal threat to a third party based on nothing more than a confiscated CD would *not* have been appropriate. Contacting a relevant authority (such as the school's IT folk, or headmaster) would have been appropriate. *Talking* to the kid would have been appropriate. Reading up a little on the subject would have been appropriate. Asking someone else, such as the school's IT folk would have been appropriate (not that school IT departments are famed for their knowledge of open source software, but it would be a start).

Let me rephrase slightly:

Someone with a "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude has no business being.

I fully understand that a teacher may need to make quick decisions without enough time. In these circumstances, you make the decision to get the maximal immediate effect with minimal consequences. The appropriate action would be something like confiscating the disks and asking the pupil to stay behind at the end of class to talk about it. The email sent off to the distributor, on the other hand, was *not* something that had to be done on the spur of the moment - there is no excuse for not taking the time to deliberate on that email.

Yes, they are examples of the worst, not the typical. They get trotted out by people who do not want to think but rather parrot their prejudices. (I guess if youtake them as examples of the US education system you would come up with the conclusion that it was pretty poor as well.) As in any country, there are a huge range of teachers and teacher competence. Some are brilliant, some pretty poor-- but most try hard to do a good job in pretty high stress circumstances.

You needed to read the followup post.

She DID talk the the kid. That was in the original post. It was through talking to the kid that she discovered that he was encouraged to hand out the disks by the third party she wrote to. Given her knowledge, she felt that this was criminal activity-- encouraging youth to flout the copyright law. Her knowledge was defective, and her anger at what she preceived as counciling young people to break the law caused her to do insufficient research.

If every time someone shot off their mouths in these newsgroups without adequate knowledge, they were shot, we would have very very few posters here. "He that is without sin...."

Yes, more research would have been good. Especially since we know that her assumptions were wrong. Mind you had she delayed acting when she found a kid handing out crack-- because maybe it was OK under the special circumstances-- we would all be screaming at the incompetence of the teacher. Copyright violation is far less serious than drug law violation (although I suspect I would get some argument on that from some people) so more deliberation would not be remiss, but under the pressure of a teaching day, I can understand it not happening. She now knows that there is such a thing as a software license which permits redistribution, something that would NOT have happened had she not written that letter. So it was actually a good thing.

Very well said. Thank you :)

It is amusing in a very twisted way to see people write that the teacher was too quick to "shoot then ask". Especially if these very same people have failed to read the entire story through, to see that the main problem (not knowing that there *IS* such a thing as free software) has long been resolved by the original parties.

That is what I have always assumed, at least for the teachers themselves. Like many workers in important but underpaid and underappreciated jobs, most do their best because they believe in what they are doing - often with far too little resources.

What stands out about the US system, at least as far as the news that travels internationally, is almost always critical of people higher up the system. We don't often hear about a teacher who insists on teaching their own bizarre theories about the world - but we *do* hear about the teachers who get in trouble for rejecting a state education board's bizarre theories.

That's right. There isn't a USA education system as such. Education is still almost entirely a local matter, with little standardization from the states and almost none from the US federal government. So some schools are very good and others horrible.

-- Patrick

The hysterical reaction was threatening legal action in the email

Jerry

The brilliant ones are often held back by the crappy system they work in, or at least that was my experience in Australian schools.

"When you make an assumption, you make an ASS out of U and ME."

Her actions were neither reasonable nor sensible. All she needed to do was spend about five minutes on Google to find that were was no legal problem with the kid handing out that software. Its fair enough to discipline the kid for being distruptive, but to make silly assumptions and threats regarding the legality of the software without taking the most basic steps to check her "facts" was another matter entirely.

It's a good thing she's not working in a field like intelligence assessment, where basing decisions on assumptions without any fact checking or evidence can cause really serious damage.

Chuckle. We have that discussion here. Apparently it is intentional to provide roll models for the less capable. Personally, I think it just allows them to hide the really bad kids away.

Crack is criminal. Copyright violation is civil. That is the huge difference and all important difference. Selling copyrighted material for a profit can be criminal under some circumstances. With software piracy the risk is losing in civil court.

No, you should review the DMCA. It's evil, but it's real.

I have. Show me what you think is criminal which makes a difference in what I said.

Now think back to all the RIAA horror stories you have heard of and think of which ones were actual criminal cases that resulted in arrests. The reason you have heard of none outside of where cash changes hands is that part has not had a substantial change.

What you will read are dozens of new provisions which lawyers can cite in threatening letters to extort money. It is called barotry using the law to make a profit. Because they started with targets they knew could not put up a legal fight they established court precedents for their claims to be correct. That is another dumb thing about the law.

If in fact those things were crimes the RIAA would not send a letter they would send a sheriff with an arrest warrant.