[Wikimedia-l] Planned school curriculum by MPAA

[Andrew Lih]

Michael, you are correct -- we should push for just ditching the whole
thing.



On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 3:56 PM, Michael Snow <wikipedia at frontier.com>wrote:

> 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
>
>
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