東京都小平市立小平第十一小学校で「著作権授業」を開催しました November.28.2014

On October 30, 2014, Japan and International Motion Picture Copyright Association (JIMCA) conducted a Copyright Class for fifth-graders at Kodaira Daijuichi Elementary School in Kodaira City, Tokyo. A JIMCA representative served as a lecturer, and a student from the Graduate School of Education, Waseda University assisted the lessons as a facilitator.

The Copyright Class consisted of two lessons – a quiz session and group discussion – for which two school periods were assigned. During the first lesson, a quiz rally – “Is this real or fake?” -, children tackled six quizzes to determine the authenticity of goods such as DVDs of popular movies and toys portraying favored characters from animated shows. Since familiar goods were used for the quiz session, children genuinely enjoyed tackling the challenges, and some of the children even came up with perfect answers to all the questions.

In the second lesson, each class engaged in group discussions regarding the type of copyright issues that elementary students might encounter. A case study proposed was – “I secretly entered my friend’s drawing for a Kodaira city contest. The work was selected for the Best Work Award, for which a prize was awarded to the friend.” The students were asked whether this would be a problem according to the Copyright Law, and questions regarding “How the friend might feel?” were actively debated.

Students came up with propositions such as “Isn’t it necessary to get permission when making use of someone’s work or using it as a reference?”. After the results were compiled by each group, a number of delegated students presented their findings. Lastly, a JIMCA representative provided a basic explanation of copyright matters.

Regarding the Copyright Class, Mr. Fujiwara, one of the fifth grade teachers, said, “The fact that new work may not be produced if pirated copies are in circulation made a deep impression in my mind. I believe that most children look forward to new titles of many movies and games and it was a great result that students were able to learn about copyright from such a kind of perspective in their fifth grade of elementary school.”

Although copyright education is included in the government curriculum guidelines, some schools still have difficulty incorporating it. In order to introduce the idea of respecting intellectual property rights as well as copyright to young generations, JIMCA has visited a number of elementary schools in different parts of Japan and conducted the “Copyright Classes”, annually for five to six schools since 2011.