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California Elementary Schools To Test Anti-Piracy Curriculum
New submitter newbie_fantod writes "Ignoring the fact that the surest way to get a child to do something is to tell them not to, the RIAA and MPAA have developed an anti-piracy curriculum for kindergarten through grade 6. The pilot project is scheduled for testing in California schools later this year."
Mitch Stoltz, an EFF attorney, isn't impressed: “It suggests, falsely, that ideas are property and that building on others’ ideas always requires permission,” Stoltz says. “The overriding message of this curriculum is that students’ time should be consumed not in creating but in worrying about their impact on corporate profits.”
Industry trade groups have no fucking business writing curriculum for children.
These assholes are of the impression the own everything, and that all of our laws and rights are subject to their approval.
Whatever idiot in the education system decided that indoctrinating children to the viewpoint of corporations should fired.
I can almost bet this will have things which are an incorrect interpretation of the law as it exists, and is nothing more than corporate propaganda.
This is the problem with America, whatever a company wants is considered right and good -- even when it's bullshit.
Is it really the case that you have companies and special interest groups creating the curriculum for your children?
How do you, as parents stand for this? You do know that you can go to the school board and freak out right? I think step 1 would be to organize a district wide freakout on the school board. Step 2, private school.
Maybe they should teach them other stuff like math, science and reading before consuming resources protecting the income of Justin Beiber. Just sayin...
No, they don't dispute that the students own their own papers. They just claim that their further sale of the submissions constitutes "fair use."
To me the horrible thing about TurnItIn is that they run this site as well.
Why not let the RIAA and MPAA write curriculum? Thanks to Common Core and Race to the Top, we are already paying big businesses such as Pearson tons of money to write curriculum that teachers aren't allowed to veer from. Then we pay these companies more to administer tons of non-developmentally-appropriate tests which parents and teachers are forbidden from seeing. Then, when the kids inevitably fail (in New York, only 30% of kids passed the tests... many of these kids were straight A students who were now considered failures), these companies "helpfully" have textbooks, teacher seminars, extra help sessions for students, instruction for administrators, etc all designed to improve the students' scores on the tests the companies wrote. And all available for a price, of course.
Don't even get me started on our education commissioner who was looking into taking legal action against parents who refused to let their kids take these tests.
Then there's the fact that charter schools are being pushed hard. These are schools which take public school funds, but are run by businesses, don't need to take any of the tests, don't require their teachers to have any sort of training in education, can pick and choose which students are allowed in. (Bad grades? You're out. Need special services? You're out.) Politicians seem to love charter schools so much and push them whenever they can. Governor Andrew Cuomo has already suggested using the "death penalty" for public schools that don't pass the overly hard tests. Of course, you can guess what he would replace them with. (No comments from him on what would happen to the kids that the charter schools refused to serve. Would a K-12 education become only for the select few that businesses decide can have it?)
I have a fifth grader and first grader who are dealing with all of this now so, yes, I might be a bit bitter.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.