Who is right here? The teacher or the student?

Piracy vs. Stealing: Teacher Fails “A” Student for Topic Choice: “Mark Frauenfelder:

Adam Brault sez: ‘Sixteen year-old Steve Geluso was failed by his English teacher for choosing to distinguish piracy from stealing in an essay.

‘Geluso, an ‘A’ student, recently completed an in-class exit exam for his Language Arts class. The goal of the exit exam was to write a comparative essay on a topic of the student’s choice. Being a student who enjoys a challenge, he wrote an essay contrasting piracy with stealing.

‘His teacher failed him, saying there was no difference between the two and that he was ‘splitting hairs’. Other teachers who read his essay said that he did well from an organizational and technical standpoint, but because his teacher felt that there was no difference between piracy and stealing, she gave him an ‘F’ because she disapproved of the content of his essay.

‘Check out his several comments regarding this event on his low-fi weblog at http://steve.mathcaddy.com Steve’s scanned-in paper is available Here (Note the ‘Continue to Page 2′ link at the bottom of the page.)’

UPDATE: Mike Harris has an HTML version of the essay. He sez: ‘I transcribed it with errors and cross-outs, along with his teachers’ commentary. Useful for those who don’t want to go through nine large scanned images to read his essay.’ Link“

(Via Boing Boing.)