At the beginning of last month the British Government launched a “Music Manifesto” to promote music in schools. But already this typically Blairite bundle of good intentions is being hijacked (with not a little cooperation from the minders in Whitehall) in order to inflict copyright lessons on schoolchildren, from pre-school onwards.
The launch itself produced a small fissure in the musical community, with composer Julian Lloyd Webber amongst others boycotting it on the basis that the manifesto didn’t actually come in with any funding for activities and instruments. And at the launch EMI commented: “We would like to see schools teaching copyright awareness so that pupils understand its importance not only to those contemplating music as a career, but to society generally”.
EMI, one of the manifesto’s founding signatories, is a singularly appropriate sponsor of this particular spin on music for kids – not a lot of pigopolists have classic songs specifically about them. But other grinding axes can be heard.
A half-day seminar on copyright education took place two weeks ago, and there the Times Educational Supplement reports that “Estelle Morris, the arts minister [she gave the keynote], education and music industry professionals expressed concern that children were increasingly downloading illegally copied material from the Internet.” And according to The Guardian EMI is planning a conference for teachers, and “working on lesson plans to explain copyright properly.”
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