An Ars Technica post today caught my eye — “Teachers’ lack of fair use education hinders learning, sets bad example”:
Here’s how bad it is: not a single teacher interviewed for a recent study on copyright reported receiving any training on fair use.
Copyright confusion is running rampant in American schools, and not just among the students. The teachers don’t know what the hell is going on, either, and media literacy is now being “compromised by unnecessary copyright restrictions and lack of understanding about copyright law.”
That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Center for Social Media at American University. Researchers wanted to know if confusion over using copyrighted material in the classroom was affecting teachers’ attempts to train students to be critical of media. The answer was an unequivocal “yes.”