Nah this isn’t really bad. It’s just watching the lectures of someone who died. If anything it’s very good. I’m sure someone that’s a professor would be happy that their knowledge lives beyond them. You don’t just discard someone’s work and knowledge because they die.
The problem is the ghouls are profiting off of it which offends my sensibilities. Who do the students ask questions to? Who grades the paper? This has a lot of implications on labor value that I don’t really have time to sus out right now
I mean not really I don’t see it any differently than reading a book of someone who died. Should we not publish books of authors who died. The students would ask questions to the current professor/TA teaching the class. The implications on the labor value are essentially nonexistent. You can’t pay a corpse and I assume there is still someone running/teaching the class that would get paid to do so. The living person’s labor is getting compensated. Whether or not the widow or next of kin should also be compensated for using their family member’s teaching material is a separate question relating to the ownership of work. In a capitalist society the university owns his work. In a socialist society I think there could be a legitimate debate on who owns the work of the dead. If it’s the family would all the descendants be paid indefinitely for the work and how is that different from a bourgeoisie class? I think your issue is really with capitalism in general. There’s really nothing wrong with this and in a socialist society I don’t see how it would really play out differently.
Yeah I mean I said my issue was with capitalism. We don’t disagree that in theory its not a bad thing at all. But under capitalism it means a further exploited TA at best, and the student is exploited as well. If the TA was qualified to teach a class, they would teach it. The only benefit of in-person education is the level of interaction. Anyone can watch YouTube videos. What exactly is the student paying for that they can’t get from Reddit and YouTube at that point?
I agree with your general sentiment. I read lots of books from dead people in university and I imagine lots of people do so what’s the difference?
The fact that somehow anyone taking this course isn’t aware of this is the garbage part. Like would it kill you to include a memoir or something anywhere.
Yeah, but the fucking university charging it for it is “weird”, because I don’t think those lectures were (nor should if it was the case) “property” of the university.
I mean now you’re getting into the fact that they’re charging for them and who owned them. Which is separate from the conversation of whether or not the lectures are being used. Unironically under capitalism the university would own them because they are his employer. Whether that’s right or wrong is a separate question. Charging for college is just a feature of living in America they’re are places where college is free. Even in a socialist society I think a university or whatever ends up replacing the university system should be able to use lectures to teach students regardless of where they came from. Knowledge is knowledge.
