MPAA bankrolled lesson plan making the rounds in junior high schools

May 1, 2004

BadReligionPR used our news submit to tell us that the MPAA has approached the non-profit Junior Achievement group with US$ 100,000 and a "notion" to get it's file sharing ethics ideas scripted to teenagers accross the land.

The lesson is complete with carefully scripted flashcards, that were created under the movie industries watchful eye. The point of which, according to MPAA spokesperson Rich Taylor, is for "students to reach their own conclusions about being a good digital citizen." It seems to be more of a brainwashing episode though, if you read this article from Wired.

The class is led by Jean Sutton, a volunteer from Junior Achievement, a nonprofit business education group. She hands each student a card that explains what role they are to play - actor, director, producer, singer, computer user, or set builder - and what their viewpoint is supposed to be. "It's good you have your own opinions," Sutton tells them. "But I want you to do the activity based on what the little piece of paper says."

Five of the pieces assert that file-sharing is unequivocally immoral. "Illegal file-swapping has turned my dreams into nightmares," reads the singer's card. "When people illegally download, they are stealing from my family and me," reads the set builder's. The single counterpoint is represented by the computer user. He defends file-sharing largely on the grounds that he won't get caught: "Last time I checked, the Internet police didn't exist."

The activity seems less a role-playing exercise than a regurgitation. Sutton asks each student "why file-swapping's such a big deal." The kids gamely paraphrase from their squares of paper. "The directors don't get paid when the people download movies," says a director. "If only, like, one person is buying the movie and everyone else is copying it, the people in the movies can't, like, make the set things," says a set builder. "It's costing me, like, big bucks because people, like, download them instead of buying them," says a producer. The children, most from the middle-class suburb of Santa Clarita, participate enthusiastically and don't appear troubled, or even bored, by the rote nature of the exercise.

This type of story is offensive on many levels to a lot of people. You have a corporate entity using a non-profit third party to get it's foot in the door of the school system. You have a situation where normal lessons are derailed for the interest of private enterprises bottom line, waving the flag of moral decency. It is a preemptive strike in that there are no numbers to back up the FUD that the MPAA is spreading to begin with. It's too one sided for these kids to make a proper decision, there is no counterpoint in order for the kids to have a spirited debate over the issue. Finally, how could any teacher be able to stand by and watch such scripted propaganda being acted out in their classroom?

Purely conjecture, but one has to wonder if there isn't more to this activity than meets the eye. The teachers that worked when I was in school, would have been offended by this tactic in their classroom and would not have liked it one bit, unless it was about drug abuse or sex education. But, those were to help the kids, not some corporations bottom line.

Let's hope before the JA robot brigade showed up, that at least some of the teachers had a heart to heart talk with the students. Explaining to them the term "firehosing" and reminding them that although they personally may not condone file sharing, complex issues such as these are not quite as two dimensional as they are soon going to be led to believe. It is critical in life for them to get all the facts, prior to making an informed decision.

Source: Wired