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1] From: Regi P George <george_regi@yahoo.com> Date: Mon Feb 28, 2005 3:30pm Subject: THE CASE AGAINST COMMERCIALISM IN SCHOOLS This article is giving some idea on the impacts of privatising education sector. THE CASE AGAINST COMMERCIALISM IN SCHOOLS The case against commercialism in schools gets to the heart of what education should and shouldn't be --the school environment, what lessons teachers should teach, and who should set the agenda. The single criterion driving these decisions should be what's best for students, not what's glossiest or most lucrative for schools. The main arguments against commercialism in the school environment and in classroom materials --why schools should be ad-free zones-- mirror some of the arguments presented against Channel One. Cedes control to people outside education. One of the complaints against Channel One is that outsiders dictate to schools what programs to show kids and how often. Teachers and administrators should set the educational agenda, not outside commercial interests. (A related problem is who should produce the educational materials schools use.) Educators with no agenda other than meeting curriculum needs and educating kids should develop and/or control the curriculum materials used in classrooms. Materials should have a legitimate education need, not a commercial motive. Compromises the integrity of education. Programs or materials produced with marketing objectives in mind are propaganda for either a product or an idea. Such materials ultimately corrupt curricula and compromise schools' efforts to educate and empower students. Getting kids to buy products, feel good about a corporation, or adopt the viewpoints of an industry on an important issue is not the purpose of education. One teacher from Alaska who we spoke with on-line agrees that "sponsorship by corporate America comes with a definite price tag." He told of receiving "two cases of a beautifully designed mini-handbook on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights" from Phillip Morris Company and putting the books in his closet because the company's logo appeared on the front and back covers. Selling or providing access for commercial purposes to kids while they are captives in the classroom is a perversion of education. Ads in school and in school materials carry the weight of an endorsement. Ads in school materials and programs lend an implied endorsement to the sponsor or its product, all the more damaging because it affects a captive audience that has been asked to trust what the teacher says and does. This power is not lost on the in-school marketer: "There is an implied endorsement from a trusted institution," says Steven Kaplan, president of Sampling Corporation of America (SCA), which distributed 110 million product samples to 76,000 schools nationwide in 1994.37 Promotional sponsored education materials blur the line between education and propaganda and lead to distorted lessons. Many commercial efforts masquerade as educational materials or activities while promoting self-interested, incomplete, or discriminatory points of view. Sponsored materials often fail to present opposing points of view, to reveal who financed studies that support their viewpoints, to acknowledge the sponsor's own financial interest in the point of view expressed, or to disclose conditions and information that affect the accuracy of what they teach. Such materials basically teach opinion as if it were fact. Similar to the confusion between the infomercial and the independent report in some magazines, this blurs the line between fact and propaganda. The result is a distorted picture of the problems, choices, and trade-offs inherent in the issues these materials cover. Often such materials contradict other lessons kids learn in school. Colas, potato chips, fast-foods, candy are all foods that students should consume only in moderation. By marketing such products to kids in school, there's the possibility that students will get the wrong idea --that they're okay after all. An example cited recently by Consumers Association of Australia noted that: "A teacher may not be sufficiently versed in nutrition to assess a company's nutrition information. Yet its products may be in direct conflict with good nutrition. Even if it is obvious to teachers and parents that a company's products are not for frequent eating, this is difficult to explain to children who are being encouraged to join in fund raising nights involving buying a company's products, or who come home with sports uniforms carrying its logo." 38 Sponsored programs and materials often bypass review processes intended to safeguard students from biased or otherwise flawed materials. Materials sent free to teachers often come into schools through the back door, rather than through the formal curriculum review boards that evaluate potential learning materials for, among other things, balanced point of view and excessive commercial content. Business-sponsored incentive, label collection, or other programs also fall outside the purview of review boards. The idea that teachers can serve as the gatekeepers against the biased messages often found in sponsored materials is naive. Despite the fact that many educators believe that teachers are capable of evaluating materials for commercialism and bias, according to Alex Molnar, Professor of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, most teachers haven't been taught how to do this --or don't even see the need to. And unless a teacher is an expert in a topic, evaluating sponsored materials is not necessarily easy. In evaluating these materials, we had to draw on CU's ecology, economics, and nutrition experts. Educators' beliefs that that they can handle and defuse promotional content of commercial programs is equally questionable. Saying that teachers can defuse the advertising messages in sponsored materials and programs and salvage something worthwhile from them is like using textbooks with gender or ethnic discrimination, and claiming it's a good way to teach about diversity. In-school marketing contributes to the din of commercialism targeted at kids, and promotes materialism. In 1990, 30,000 television commercials were aimed at children in the home. Add to this a host of kids' clubs, catalogs, comic book and magazine ads, and a range of ads and promotional materials in the schools, and our children may be the most targeted group of Americans that has ever existed. The message that comes through this din is pro-consumption. But creating such a buy-me-that climate among children who are already burdened with too many ads to buy things they can't afford is obviously unfair. Advertising for everything from fast food to sneakers can come between students and their families: Pressuring parents to buy certain products often leads to conflict. Regardless of one's personal position on materialism and consumption, schools should be preparing students to make their own choices, not influencing them to follow the path advocated by marketers. The idea that kids aren't influenced by in-school advertising because it's everywhere reflects a naivete about the nature of advertising. Even adults are affected by advertising. If they weren't, advertisers wouldn't be in business. Students are even less discerning and therefore more easily influenced than adults. The idea that school-business partnerships should have a commercial pay-back aspect is unethical. Rather than sell students' minds to business in exchange for free programs or technology, schools need to pressure the corporate sector to live up to its non-marketing responsibility to support schools, the institutions that are preparing the corporations' future workers, future consumers, and future citizens. Any one of these factors alone poses a threat to the independence and integrity of the educational system. And left unchecked it is likely to grow stronger in the future. According to statistics from the Council for Aid to Education, Corporate America's interest in education gets stronger every year --corporations are focusing more money than ever on donations and programs for elementary and secondary schools. Corporate expenditures on pre-college education in 1993 totaled $381 million nationwide, or 15 percent of all corporate donations for that year. That's 54 times what it was three decades ago, or an increase of 5400 percent. Most of that growth in corporate spending has occurred in the last five to ten years.39 We were unable to find data on how much of this money supported non-commercial school programs, and how much went to schools with strings attached. Most likely it does not include sponsored educational materials. According to Diana Rigden, CAE's vice president for precollege programs, the cost of funding sponsored materials would be considered "cause-driven marketing" and would not count as support of education. However, equipment that is given to schools under an I'll-scratch-your-back, you-scratch-mine arrangement would. Do corporations get tax breaks for such arrangements? It's a question worth exploring. We polled 21 education associations to learn where they stand in this debate. The strongest opponents of commercialism in U.S. elementary and secondary schools are the National Education Association (NEA), which opposes many such activities and will fight them in the courts, and the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA). The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) is also opposed to advertising in the classroom. Many of the other education organizations we polled felt it was up to the individual districts, supervisors, and teachers to determine policy. None of the groups actively encourages commercialism in the schools, and some are currently forming policy guidelines intended to establish minimum standard requirements for sponsored materials. See the Ratings Charts for the responses of each of these organizations. It is worth noting that half of the groups have taken clear stands against the use of Channel One. And not one of the groups champion Channel One as a valuable teaching tool or an important part of the school day. Positions on other types of commercial materials were mixed. Sponsored educational materials (teacher's guides, posters, workbooks, videos, etc.) elicited outright opposition only from ASCD, but most groups encourage close monitoring by teachers and principals. The National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) advocates that schools and businesses develop materials through partnerships, as long as this does not result in "commercialization of instructional time." Many other groups encouraged setting standards at district and state levels, with schools responsible for evaluating sponsored educational materials case-by-case. Positions were even less fixed with regard to the use of ad-bearing materials on school grounds. Most of the groups we polled had no official position. Those that did all mentioned that no student should be required to view commercial materials, but did not close the door on placing ads on school buses, or on print ads in classroom magazines. http://www.consumersunion.org -------------------------------------------------------------- 2] From: Regi P George <george_regi@yahoo.com> Date: Mon Feb 28, 2005 3:43pm Subject: Captive Kids: A Report on Commercial Pressures on Kids at School http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=883 This article is about american schools; but it should be an eye opener to those who stand for commericalisation of education in india. Captive Kids: A Report on Commercial Pressures on Kids at School |
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February28, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net]Shocking verdict in Sex Racket case: Can we help? >> |
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