Monday, June 23, 2003
Your child's education, sponsored, in part, by . . .
The year-end school party in Catherine Poling's third-grade class this week was a bit unusual: It had a corporate sponsor. Dunkin' Donuts sent four dozen doughnuts and a representative to help celebrate the class's $6,000 grand prize victory in the company's contest to develop a one-minute commercial on "selling" the importance of homework.
The school, two-year-old Oakdale Elementary in Frederick County, is getting used to receiving large corporate checks. Last year, it won $10,000 for performing the best interpretation of Oscar Mayer's well-known wiener song. This year it won another $10,000 from Oscar Mayer for singing its bologna song and two other melodies, written by music teacher Lori Bower, praising Oscar Mayer Lunchables, complete with children dressed up as dancing pieces of bologna, ham and cheese.
Oakdale is the beneficiary of business's new efforts to market products inside schools, encouraging students to influence their parents' purchases.
One way they're reaching kids is by offering cash prizes to schools. Nestle offers a $10,000 grand prize for the most creative art using SweeTarts. It also awards five, $5,000 first-place awards. Angel Soft toilet paper sponsors "Angel in Action," awarding $10,000 to the school with the best community service program, along with another $1,000 for the teacher.
While companies say they are filling a gap left by school funding deficits, some experts decry the trend.
"It's a very dangerous thing for a corporation to have this kind of presence in school," said advertising critic Jean Kilbourne. Children are more susceptible in school, she said, because they tend to believe that what they learn there is valid. So a commercial message in schools, no matter how subtle, "gives an aura of responsibility and truth," Kilbourne said.
Companies acknowledge they are trying to reach their current and future customers, but say their programs promote goodwill and help cash-strapped schools.
The rest of the article offers a sickening display of the companies' barely veiled attempts to capture a lucrative audience by claiming it's for the good of the students and the school districts blaming a lack of funds for their acquiesence to such a program. The companies and school officials try to play this off as a "creative" way to teach children. But there are a million "creative" methods of education that don't kowtow to corporate sponsorship.
The other issue here is that schools ARE criminally underfunded - we need to force legislators to recognize the vast importance of public education. Write your congressperson today.
posted by chris at 11:29 AM
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