Many books have examined what attracts community involvement,
providing specific plans for volunteer programs and resource
development. There are also some that identifies the stakeholders
and what they can offer a school. School administrations
have described policies and procedures for program monitoring
in relation to offering specific material for a workshop
to train teachers in the use of tutors and mentors in
the classroom, including overheads, worksheets, and memos.
Aside from making outlines strategies using volunteers
that increase literacy for students and their families,
schools must also address sources of funding in order
to explain the cost-effective nature of community support,
and show how all the stockholders can affect public policy
to increase the number of community-empowered schools.
American
schools are awash in commercialism. Corporate America
routinely sponsors programs and activities, promotes its
products and services, and attempts to “tell its story”
in schools and classrooms. Since 1998 the Commercialism
in Education Research Unit (CERU) has in annual reports
documented the scope and character of these commercializing
activities. Of the trends reported the rapid increase
in the number of schools signing exclusive agreements
with soft drink bottlers is among the more troubling from
a public health perspective.
Manufacturers of processed foods with high fat, sugar,
and salt content such as hamburgers, French fries, and
candy promote their products in schools using a number
of guises, e.g., contests, incentive programs, and “learning”
materials that feature their products. Soft drink bottlers
have, in addition, offered schools financial incentives
to sign “exclusive” agreements that guarantee only their
products will be sold in the school. The effect of these
agreements is to turn schools into agents of the bottler
with a financial incentive to promote the consumption
of the bottler’s products.
In any school the health and nutrition curriculum children
are taught advocates a well balanced diet that is low
in fat, sugar, and salt. When a school enters into an
exclusive agreement with a bottler it, in effect, undermines
its own curriculum and puts the school in the position
of tacitly promoting unhealthful behavior. Soft drink
consumption has increased dramatically over the last decade.
Since soft drink consumption is closely associated with
childhood obesity, and is a risk factor for diabetes,
enlightened child-oriented policy would remove soft drinks
from schools altogether instead of seeking to profit from
their consumption. There are signs of a backlash. In California,
for example, legislators weighed a bill that would tax
soft-drink syrup and use the proceeds to fund anti-obesity
programs for children, while the Public Health Institute
of Berkeley released a report charging that companies
had too much selling and marketing power in schools. Some
schools began curtailing such agreements on their own.
In the Wisconsin school district of Mequon-Thiensville,
a school board member’s resistance to an exclusivity agreement
with Pepsi-Cola was met part way with an agreement between
the district and the company not to allow Pepsi logos
on athletic scoreboards. In August 2001, Madison, Wis.,
schools opted not to renew a contract with Coca-Cola worth
$300,000 to the district.
In late August 2002, the Los Angeles School Board banned
the sale of soft drinks in the district’s 677 schools
in vending machines or school stores during school hours
beginning in 2004. In doing so, school officials noted
that the action would cost schools tens of thousands of
dollars each in profits received under exclusive merchandising
agreements, but held firm. The ban “was inspired, in part,
by recent reports spotlighting the obesity epidemic in
Los Angeles, including a UCLA survey that found that 40
percent of 900 students in 14 Los Angeles Unified schools
were obese,” the Los Angeles Times noted.
Still, exclusive deals continued to hold sway. While Coca-Cola
in March 2001 announced it was backing away from exclusive
pouring rights contracts with schools and would not block
more healthful competing drinks such as juices and water
from its school vending machines, the soft drink manufacturer
continued to look for ways to exercise market leverage
with youth outside schoolhouse walls. In Oakland, Calif.,
for example, the company promised the city $500,000 for
community youth programs in return for a 10-year agreement
banning the sale of competitors’ soft drinks on city property.
The commercialization of education, carried out by global
corporations, is the practice of altering or disrupting
the teaching and learning process in schools from kindergarten
through college, by introducing advertising and other
commercial activities in order to increase profit.
Body
Corporations claim, with great fanfare, that they are
‘community partners’ bringing needed resources to underfunded
schools and helping students get the things that legislators
can’t or won’t provide. In reality, through tax loopholes
and lobbying, corporations have themselves defunded education.
In-School marketers have made it clear that they intend
to infiltrate and use public schools as a vehicle for
reaching a captive audience. Their stated goal is to brand
children as early as possible to consume their clients’
products. Systematic commercialization of schools is a
relatively new marketing strategy, although its roots
go back decades to in-school ‘banking’ programs and the
occasional fundraiser such as magazine sales. The 1990’s
saw an explosion of marketing to children in schools.
Commercializing schools has the power to break down the
distinction between truth and fiction, the relationship
between teachers and students, and the barrier between
public and private domains. By inserting commercial messages
throughout the school day, corporations have violated
the social contract that those entrusted with the welfare
of children will be guided by their own professional judgment.
For the first time in American history, educators are
standing aside and allowing global corporations to ‘educate’
our children. With little or no state legislation or district
policy regulating commercialism, marketers have begun
introducing hundreds of commercial messages into the school
day. Despite research and testimony from educators, health
care professionals, and parents that schools are being
misused for commercial purposes and that the teacher-student
relationship is being eroded by outside commercial interests,
school boards are reluctant to address the issue, much
less adopt a strong policy. ‘Entrepreneurial’ district
administrators insist that in-school marketing and corporate
‘partnership’ schemes are ‘creative’ sources of education
funding. This new Orwellian era of ‘Schools ‘R’ Us’ is
frightening. Currently, 40% of all secondary students
in the United States are required to watch daily television
commercials as part of one marketing scheme – Chris Whittle’s
Channel One program. Thousands of thirsty students have
no choice but to buy Pepsi or Coca-Cola drinks at their
school, due to exclusive contracts signed by their school
administrators.
Thousands of elementary school students are exposed every
day to advertising messages from food companies and industry
groups plastered on their cafeteria walls. A 1997 study
by the Seattle Council of Parent Teacher Student Associations
found a wide variety of commercial messages in 29 of the
30 Seattle elementary and secondary schools sampled.
Children are now bombarded at school with wall advertisements,
daily television commercials, promotional samples, school
fund-raising schemes, contests requiring students to claim
prizes at local franchises, internet banner advertisements
on every website seen at school, and large printed advertisements
distributed to children to use as book covers. Logos of
corporate sponsors festoon everything from lunch menus
to homework assignments to bookmarks. Corporate messages
are also introduced indirectly through sponsored educational
materials such as lesson plans, videos, and reproducibles,
Corporations sponsor free trainings for teachers and administrators,
as well as presentations at conventions for school board
members. Commercialism of education is inherently damaging
for the development of children and ultimately for the
future of democracy. The damage to children’s development
falls into three general categories –physical, psycho-social,
and intellectual. A brief look at these three areas shows
why education must become commercial-free.
Schools promote sales of soft drinks containing high levels
of sugar and caffeine. Their ‘empty calories’ can take
the place of nutritionally valuable food or lead to weight
gain. Schools also expose children to direct advertising
and sales of snack foods and candy. Some schools have
outsourced their school lunch program to fast-food franchises
such as Pizza Hut. School PTAs are paid to encourage families
to eat General Mills products, ignoring concerns about
possible effects of Genetically Engineered food on children.The
foods and beverages advertised and sold to children at
school present added risks for obesity, diabetes, bone
fracture, cardiovascular disease, and dental caries. These
foods are in direct competition with the school lunch
programs and nutritional guidelines set forth by the USDA,
as well as the schools’ own health curriculums.
Conclusion
The clutter of advertising throughout the school environment
does more than distract children from reflecting on important
lessons and focusing on necessary skills. The subtext
of all ads is that problems are best solved by spending
money. The manipulation of words and imagery to influence
behavior is propaganda, so by definition, advertising
is antithetical to true education. Given the dearth of
systematic media-literacy education, children are ill-equipped
to cope with sophisticated marketing techniques. American
children are already bombarded with ads in the outside
world – now even school does not provide a refuge for
developing critical thinking. Selling and giving marketers
access to the minds of children who need and deserve a
real education is not only exploitation of children but
of the public trust. A democratic society depends on the
good judgment and participation of its citizens, and when
the process of educating our own citizens is sabotaged
for profit, democracy itself is endangered. Commercialism
of schools is not simply a case of ‘adding a few ads’
to a child’s day -- commercializing public education is
a wholesale corporate takeover of our future. In a democracy,
it’s the kind of risky business we can’t afford.
In this regard, it can be seen that the administration
of school has been affecting the students and the teachers
in such a way that they do not have a voice with regard
to the things that are happening in the school. They are
some sort of robots to the administration of the schools.
This is because of the fact that even if the school teachers,
parents and students are no longer in agreement with the
school administration, they do not have a voice. They
cannot voice out their opinion because the school administration
ahs already settled and agreed with other commercialized
business for the sake of raising funds and developing
the schools and everything related to it.
References
Seaton,
D. (2002, April 4) School soda pacts viewed. The Press-Enterprise
(Riverside, CA), p. B1.
Rummler,
G. (2001, Sept. 24) Ads in Milwaukee Schools Raise Money,
Ire. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
Hayasaki,
E. (2002, Aug. 28) Schools to end soda sales. Los Angeles
Times Part 2, p. 1.
Homsey,
G. The market rules: when are corporate sponsorships too
much of a good thing? Planning (the American Planning
Assn.), Nov. 1, 2001, Vol. 67, No. 11, p. 10
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