DepEd to adopt IP rights lessons in HS curriculum

The Department of Education is planning to integrate intellectual property lessons into the high school curriculum to instill IP rights protection in Filipino students.

The department has tapped the National Book Development Board (NBDB) to work on the proposal integrating the IP lessons into the economics subjects for third or fourth year high school students.

Dennis Gonzales, NBDB chairman and DepEd consultant for a revised basic education curriculum, said that intellectual property rights (IPR) encourage creativity, entrepreneurship and economic growth.

He said they are also discouraging young people from buying pirated digital videodiscs, compact discs and software.

Gonzales said that the NBDB already submitted its proposal to the DepEd, which is expected to integrate IPR topics into economics subjects by the start of the 2007 school year.

Included in the NBDB's proposal is a suggestion requiring publishers of economics textbooks to include IP rights and law concepts in their books. Economics textbooks with new IPR content will follow the implementation of the new IPR topics.

Gonzales said that the inclusion of IPR is a "positive step towards educating the youth about the significance of intellectual property as a factor of production, specially in a globalizing knowledge economy," Gonzales said.

The NBDB's proposal is only for high school students, but Gonzales hopes intellectual property concepts will begin to set in as early as the elementary grades. - Jasmin R. Uy