|
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! |