Schools Should be Commercial Free Zones

Andrew Hagelshaw

My name is Andrew Hagelshaw I am the Executive Director of a group called the Center for Commercial-Free Public Education. We are proud to be a member of the SCEC organizing committee. The Center for Commercial-Free Public Education has been organizing grassroots resistance to advertising in schools since 1993. We work with parents, students and teachers across the US to prevent commercial intrusion into the public school environment. We are proud to say we have had a tremendous impact on the issue of advertising in schools.

Overview of issue, some of the burning trends

What is commercialism in schools?

Many of you are familiar with Channel One, the in-classroom television “program” that contains two minutes of advertising. Channel One kicked down the school door for other types of advertising by showing other companies that it was possible to aggressively market to kids as part of the curriculum, right during tax payer funded school time.

We have been aggressively fighting exclusive cola contracts with Coke and Pepsi, which look to promote cola consumption as a school activity, dramatically increasing levels of advertising along the way.

We also see an increase in sponsored educational materials- the environment brought to you by Exxon or Shell, or  nutrition taught by McDonalds or M&M mars.

We see a new push for naming rights, such as in Charlotte, North Carolina, where we will have a school district with entire portions of the building named after a particular companies. Imagine now the Pizza Hut cafeteria, or the General Electric library.

We’ve also tackled the issue of textbook ads, some of you might remember the McGraw-Hill textbook containing advertising that we blew the whistle on two years sago. This is a sixth grade math textbook where we see ads right in the story problems, you know- “Johnny has 30 dollars, now he wants to buy a pair of Nike shoes that cost 60 dollars, how many weeks must he save his allowance to afford the shoes.”

Companies want to take advantage of new technologies-examples have included ZapMe or N2H2, both companies that tried to use school’s desire for tech equipment to use computers as vehicles for directed brand name ads.

What are the new trends with advertising in schools?

Companies are going after younger and younger students. We now have an exclusive cola contract in an Arizona school district that is for elementary schools only.

Also the emergence of middle men who make a living off of promoting deals to school districts and then take a cut of the deal, such as Dan DeRose of D&D Marketing.

Companies are getting more and more aggressive in general. Companies with brand name curriculum to push want to become the curriculum not just be connected to it. They want people, rather then to have a negative or positive reaction to ads in schools, to have no reaction at all. To just accept ads as reality and not question them, and to this end they want to be part of every aspect of the school environment.

Connected to this is the way that companies want to give less and less to schools in return-they want to profit literally at the expense of taxpayers, if at all possible. That McGraw-Hill textbook, for example, doesn’t have any cost benefit for schools at all- in fact taxpayers in that case are purchasing the very item that brings their students the advertising.

We of course feel corporations can play a role with schools, but we know they already get something in return. Any donations they give to schools are helping educate future citizens, future employees, and future consumers. They should be giving schools money without strings, and perhaps just using their assistance as a PR opportunity, but free of brand name advertising opportunities. Why should they expect something back at the expense of students?

Problems that commercialism brings

Going after Captive Audience, promoting Lifetime brand loyalty. It’s not the same as seeing ads at home, because of the implied endorsement of the schools, teachers, principals, etc.

Schools should not be set up to endorse products, not appropriate at all. If public opinion is that such advertising is not OK for city halls or  courthouses, then why for schools?

Ads disrupt the learning process and contradicts the lessons teachers teach. Look at the obvious contradiction between Coke and Pepsi ads and nutrition education.

Advertising is the opposite of critical thinking. Every school district in the country would argue that critical thinking skills are a vital part of the role they play with educating students. But advertising teaches students exactly the opposite, empty your head, don’t think at all, just buy this product. The two cannot co-exist successfully in the same environment.

Commercialism robs communities of local control of education- parents who don’t want their kids to drink soda or watch TV, tough luck!

Commercialism distorts educational priorities, like in Evans, GA where the student was suspended for wearing a Pepsi shirt of Coke day, or with the “Coke Dude” letter in Colorado Springs, where an administrator asked his principals (who already have enough to do with their valuable time) to do whatever it took to promote Coke to the kids.

Slippery slope-where can you draw the line? Most districts start with one thing, and go to another and another until they’ve lost control, such as District 11-Colorado Springs.

The good news: resistance, victories, state legislative efforts

I want to finish with some good news: resistance to commercialism in schools is not only possible on the local level, it is happening at a growing rate! There is a backlash happening around the country. Let me list just a few victories:  

We’ve successfully kicked Channel One out of dozens of places. We have defended the law against Ch 1 in NY State three separate times. We’ve blown the lid off of the McGraw-Hill math textbook to sixth graders that contained advertising and worked to get the book outlawed in CA, and possibly soon NY. McGraw-Hill is now saying they will change the way they make future books. ZapMe, the internet with ads company I mentioned earlier, went out of business last year-they were telling reporters that one of the reasons for their demise was the growing national opinion against commercialism in schools.

And of course for the last three years our Center has been fighting tooth and nail against cola contracts. By now we’ve blocked a few dozen deals, had state legislation introduced in several places, and Coke and Pepsi are scared to death that their days in schools are numbered. That, of course, was the motivation behind their announcement last March that they are “changing their relationship” with schools. We’ll believe it when we see it, but still-Coke felt compelled to address the issue! They would ignore us if they could–it indicates the growing backlash against commercialism in schools.

The US GAO came out with their first report on advertising in schools last fall, the American Dental Association and the National Education Association have taken public stands against cola contracts, and there has even been an attempt at federal legislation over the last year and half to address the issue of privacy invasion connected to commercialism in schools.

What does this backlash mean?

Two things: one, because the majority of decisions in public education are made on the local level by locally elected school boards, communities can take control, and a few people can make a huge difference. In Philadelphia, 3 parents saved 215,00 students from coke advertising in 2000. People sometimes call commercialism contract proposals “Done deals”- how many done deals have we seen killed by local activists? We don’t even pay attention to the term “done deal” any more!

Two, we have the advantage when more people know, because companies want to do this on the sly, without public knowledge. Marketers prefer back room deals, working with one administrator or principal or board member.

Local school board policies are a key! For enduring, continued resistance, policies help address any kid of recurring contracts or slippery slope possibilities.

We’ve already changed the terms of the debate. (The question used to be “Is commercialism good or bad?” Now it’s “Yes, it’s bad, but we still need it for this or that reason.”) We have a vision where we can all take it the next step and make commercialism in schools socially unacceptable to the point where companies don’t even want to touch it for fear of the bad PR, new advertising efforts won’t spring up because they know they’ll fail (like ZapMe) and school board members will immediately think it isn’t worth their time because of the headaches it will bring them. State legislation will spring up to make it harder and harder to advertise in schools.

We’re on our way there!