EDUCATION RENAISSANCE / Kids' communication skills honed through 'ads'

Takayuki Yasui / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

The following article is a translation from The Yomiuri Shimbun's Education Renaissance series. This is the first installment in a five-part subseries detailing the various roles played by companies--as part of their corporate social responsibility activities--in promoting programs designed to help students better relate to society. This piece focuses on a special curriculum aimed at encouraging children to produce commercials in class to efficiently communicate their opinions to others.

"Three. Two. One...Action!" The command was given by Kano Ikeda, a teacher at a primary school in Tokyo's Suginami Ward, to students in a special lesson in mid-December, as she struck a clapboard of the type used in shooting movies. Her sixth-grade students began giving a presentation of a "TV commercial" created as part of their lesson.

The lesson at Takaido-Higashi Primary School was part of the "Kokoku Shogakko" (literally, advertising primary school) curriculum, in which students produce their own "TV commercials" under a theme of their choosing. During the lesson, the sixth-graders performed their own commercials on stage--with a large frame set in front of them representing a TV screen.

The curriculum has been jointly designed by Tokyo Gakugei University and Dentsu Inc. since 2006, with the aim of improving children's communication skills by encouraging them to produce something they would feel familiar with in their daily lives--commercials.

Yuko Nakamura, director of Dentsu's social action programs, says they originally launched the advertising primary school curriculum to help children become proactive in giving their own interpretation of information they get through mass media. "However, we revised the curriculum after we learned it could also foster the children's abilities to convey their opinions while we worked on editing curriculum materials."

The curriculum comprises three phases--an initial four-hour "beginner-level" course; a six-hour "self-discovery" course; and a final five-hour "public advertisement" production course.

Under the system, teachers--rather than professionals from Dentsu--give the lessons using instructional DVDs and other materials developed and provided at no cost by the firm. "That's because teachers know much better than anyone else how to convey to their students what they want to teach," Nakamura said.

The Takaido-Higashi school, run by the Suginami Ward government, has been using the curriculum since 2009 as part of its general studies classes.

For the Dec. 19 lesson--part of the "public advertisement" course--the teacher asked sixth-graders to pick a social problem, think about what causes the problem, and make presentations about possible solutions in a commercial lasting about 15 seconds.

The theme Shunpei Okada, 11, chose was a serious one: Stop murders. The commercial he produced depicts a man who wants to kill another person, but can't help dancing once the music starts.

"I thought people would hold back [from wrongdoing] if they experienced happy feelings at the moment," the boy said. "[The lesson] was interesting as I could convey what I wanted [to the audience]."

The 25-year-old Ikeda has a high opinion of the ad production programs, as she feels the lessons have improved the students' writing ability. She also feels "it develops cognitive skills, as students imagine and consider what characters desire [in a commercial's story]."

According to Masashi Okuma of the university's Graduate School of Teacher Education, who was one of the developers of the curriculum, advertising professionals often develop more than 100 story ideas for each commercial. "The children must have gained thinking skills by learning from the professionals," Okuma said. "They also must have recognized the company's high [commercial production] skills."