youtubing teachers

Yesterday's Inside Higher Ed has an article about students putting up videos of their professors and teachers on YouTube. I just find it bizarre that this article about the potential for rights being violated--intellectual property rights, privacy, etc.-- included links to the videos. Not that I didn't click on the links and waste many minutes of my morning in the time-suck that is YouTube.... Still, I thought the article could have done more to explore the "other side," but all it had was this one overly simplified comment:

Among the issues being raised are whether this form of expression — however upsetting to faculty members — is an example of students acting on their feelings and expressing themselves, something composition instructors in particular tend to encourage.

And this idea is taken from discussion of this issue over at the blog digital digs. But again, these blogs that say they don't want to give too much attention to the issue (or the actual videos themselves), give the links to them. We are, after all, the reality show culture, so we want to see "the reality." Show me this stuff really is happenin'. And I am a product of this as well.

Jeff Rice in his blog Yellow Dog provides an interesting perspective on this genre of YouTube videos by exploring the conditions within which the teachers are situated. This perspective seems relevant then to the series of comments left under one of the videos where the teacher is screaming at his students during "the pledge." A number of comments are all about how and why this video represents why teachers should be hated and should *not* be respected, but the last comment questions the previous ones, asking what the problem is with a teacher trying to make "a bunch of arrogant jerkoff kids stand during their country's national anthem." And while I'm not sure about making anyone stand during the national anthem--that seems to be missing the point--this comment seems the only one with even minimal awareness of the teacher's situation.