And of course privatized educational opportunities rewards the sons & daughters of those whose parents can pay for it.

Teaching is just not a good profession nowadays. Just watch tons of videos on Youtube or Youku. Perhaps tutoring is a better option. Private lessons where the student actually wants to learn. Maybe 30-40 years ago teaching was a good profession but nowadays no way.

@cloudtrapezer wrote: "I was satirizing the pompous use of the term Intellectual Property."

So some professions are of such lofty standing that they may use the term. But other professions are mere commoners, who shall not use the term lest they be derided as "pompous" by their betters. Sort of like how only aristocrats could wear silk in feudal China.

@cloudtrapezer wrote:
"I seriously doubt even American lawyers would have a stab at working out which part of a lesson plan belonged to which teacher. There is so much material on the web, lying around in staff rooms and so on."

Let's transpose that and see how it sounds:
"I seriously doubt even American lawyers would have a stab at working out which part of a song belonged to which musician. There is so much music on the web, lying around in recording studios and so on."

Mae culpa. I glibly (not pompously) used the term IP, without foreseeing overreaction from some quarters. How about if I had said, 'the results of my efforts in my own time, for which I wasn't paid'?

I love your faux radicalism.

Much better Tiger.

And when was China feudal?

@herenow: "some professions are of such lofty standing that they may use the term"

I don't think that it is so much about standing, but the content of the job itself.

If the purpose of the job, the stuff you get paid for, is to create IP, then IP it is. And it will not be your IP, but that of your employer.

In some rare cases, you perhaps develop tools that help you create that IP to your employer, and you can challenge whether the IP of those tools belongs to you or the employer. In most cases these are preactively covered in job contracts, and anyway you couldn't claim as your IP something that is common public information.

If you sign a contract to teach, then the purpose is not to create IP, but to teach. The kids will not be your intellectual property.

If you sign a contract to not only teach but yourself plan the lessons (even if you agree to do it without pay), your work output governed by that contract still belongs to your employer.

Your analogy to music industry has flaws. There are numerous, hundreds of thousands, cases where musicians sign into bad contracts with record labels and then suffer for it often their whole careers.

It is matter of what you sign into. I don't know if teachers in general are more susceptible for such problems than some other professionals, but I'm pretty sure that musicians top that ranking.

I agree with @cloudtrapezer that in such cases you have no legal basis for any claims.

@cloudtrapezer: You are quite magnanimous in stooping to pardon that transgression.

@cloudtrapezer wrote "faux radicalism"

That actually reminds me of you: fashionably and performatively woke, until the rubber actually meets the economic road in terms of for-profit schools stealing teachers' work products, and then you suddenly come up with all sorts of convenient rationalizations as to why the teachers are wrong to object.