東京都墨田区立錦糸小学校で「著作権授業」を開催しました May.27.2014

On May 24, 2014, Japan and International Motion Picture Copyright Association (JIMCA) conducted a Copyright Class called “Parent-Child Participatory Lessons – Let’s Learn Copyright!” for fourth-graders and their guardians at Kinshi Elementary School in Sumida Ward, 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 a quiz session and group discussion. During the first lesson, a quiz rally – “Is this real or fake?” was conducted at the gymnasium where children tackled six quizzes to determine the authenticity of goods such as DVDs of popular movies and toys portraying popular characters. 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 half of the 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 applied my friend’s drawing for a 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.

Issues, such as “How the friend might feel?”, were actively debated and ma number of propositions such as: “Some people might feel embarrassed if they find out that their work was secretly used for a competition”, were entertained by the students. After the results were compiled by each group, some students presented their findings. Lastly, a JIMCA representative provided a basic explanation of copyright matters at the end of the lesson.

Since this was a class observation day for parents, many guardians visited the school and reviewed both the authentic and fake versions of movie DVDs exhibited. Guardians were also asked to participate in the lessons and encouraged to give their opinions. One guardian said, “The lessons were very easy to understand as familiar subjects such as popular Disney movies were used to illustrate the proposition. We will discuss this matter during our dinner tonight.”

On this occasion, the Copyright Class was conducted with the support of School Support Network Headquarters Secretariat, Sumida Educational Research Institute, Board of Education Secretariat of Sumida Ward. Mr. Yoshio Morimoto, Head of the Secretariat, said, “I believe that the lessons this time were effective as they included products that interest children, and learning from an external lecturer is a good experience for students. I think it was great that the home room teachers regularly in contact with children were also able to participate in the lessons.”

In order to raise the young generation’s awareness toward copyright as early as possible, JIMCA has visited a number of elementary schools in different parts of Japan and conducted Copyright Classes for five to six schools annually since 2011.