Liberal Education Today

American teachers generally lack information about copyright, according to an American University study.

One big problem is that few teachers understand copyright law; they follow guidelines drawn up by school media departments or district lawyers, or they rely on books that attempt to lay down principles appropriate for an educational setting. As the report notes, though, this advice is generally of the most conservative kind, while long-established principles of fair use may afford far more rights—especially in a face-to-face educational setting.

Practical implications of this:

Researchers found that teachers may not understand the law (or may understand it to be unduly restrictive), but that they deal with their confusion in three different ways. Teachers can "see no evil" by refusing to even educate themselves about copyright, on the thinking that it can't be wrong if they don't know it's wrong. Others simply "close the door" and do whatever they want within the classroom, while a third group attempts to "hyper-comply" with the law (or what they perceive the law to be).

(via KairosNews)