[Wikimedia-l] Planned school curriculum by MPAA

[Michael Snow]

On 9/25/2013 11:33 AM, Andrew Lih wrote:
> I'd be OK if they simply gave some space in the training materials to talk
> about public domain, free licenses and fair use. That's not likely to
> happen given who's in control of those lesson plans.
Because the program in question is intended for elementary schools, they 
claim that the children aren't ready to handle the level of nuance and 
abstract thought involved in those concepts. I might be willing to 
accept that objection, but it really should be taken a step farther. At 
that stage, most children aren't developmentally ready for the level of 
abstraction involved in copyright, period. Neither the things it forbids 
nor the things it allows.

A second-grader who wants to draw Buzz Lightyear, because that's her 
favorite cartoon character and she wants to be an astronaut, is never 
going to understand that Pixar owns the rights to that character and she 
can't do whatever she wants with it. ("Honey, why don't you just put 
away the crayons and come play with your action figure instead?") ("Yes, 
I know Grandma buys your artwork for a quarter so she can put it on her 
refrigerator, but you're not allowed to give her this one.") You can 
tell her what's allowed and what's not, and she may even comply, but 
there's no way she will understand the reasons, in her mind they will 
simply be rules that you made up.

That's a particularly good sign that the purpose of the materials is 
really propaganda and indoctrination. Regardless of whether the 
curriculum is suitably "balanced", the concepts are beyond what's 
developmentally appropriate to be teaching at that level.

--Michael Snow