So they force you(especially if you're poor or underprivileged) to go to the school, lirerally at the point of a gun with truancy laws, force you to complete the assignments, and then appropriate the work for themselves alone and possibly profit from it.
Id agree so long as students have a choice. Otherwise, it's just the plantation owner talking about how good the slaves have it because he feeds them so well.
How much profit is being derived from the work of children though? It seems a stretch to make a comparison with plantations/slaves. Any profit that is generated from children in school is a side-effect, not a primary goal. Though I can see this setting up a situation of perverse incentives.
I doubt this is about profit. It's more likely that they wanted the copyright so they can use services that detect plagiarism without having to get consent from the students every time.
Now they're saying it's all a big mistake. Not sure I believe it.
If that was the purpose, then I think it was a mistake, since they could get the same results with a permanent, non-revocable license, instead of demanding full copyright assignment.
Once they get kids into the system, they have a suprising array of coercive methods to get students to perform. Vague threats about future actions, social shaming through posted grades and holding students back as their class moves on, etc.
I grant you that hard-core slackers laugh at this until they can get away with dropping out, but a large majority of students will conform to the physiological pressure to comply.
I literally did no (assigned) work in High School, failed every class, and still graduated a year early. It was about 50% moral outrage at the state of our education system, %40 I could teach myself things better, %10 I was a lazy arsehole.
I came within one point (on my last math final) of not graduating; teacher made a mistake grading the exam, a 69 turned into a 70, a 70 got my GPA just to the point where I got a diploma. Otherwise, I guess, summer school.
I graduated from the school. They wanted to get me out of there so at the end of my Sophomore year, they gave me a test, I aced it, and I got to not attend my senior year. (Strangely, they still let me compete in the Science Olympiad because I was the only one who knew how to use the GPS)
Oh I think there might be a term for that.