Children are the market of the future.
The lines of cultures blur as an urge to buy the latest commodity becomes what life is about. Tradition be damned, kids just want toys and video games worldwide, except, you know, where they are starving to death or being bombed…
“Manipulating reality is the purpose of advertising.”
Dole lesson plans for social studies, language arts, and math, and Pizza Hut reading incentives are just two examples of major corporations getting their claws into the schools and the vast market of children consumers.
What are worse are the ‘promises of cash donations, free teacher materials or free technology,’ including, ‘monitors, videotaping equipment, satellite dish and computers,’ for allowing advertising in the schools, sometimes ‘oil and chemical industries and conservative coalitions’ geared towards advertising pro-torture and anti-environmentalism.
In other words, $150,000 in technology that the schools may be hard pressed to get in other ways, certainly no bake sale. Another example the article points out that shows how advertising is getting in to schools is the Junior Jays magazine distributed to elementary schools glorifying soda, snacks, fast food and the movie industry.
Visual noise and pressure to spend, spend, spend, should be kept out of schools and anywhere that forms a major portion of children’s mental environment.
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Does the school board/ principal/ teachers/ etc not have a choice as to which companies they will take money from in order to create a better education for the students and which ones they will leave out because of the implications? You wouldn't allow Playboy to buy all your team jersey's, but possibly Chuck E Cheese? Schools need the money. The most recent Alberta government does not have a good history of supporting education. This refelcets onto the people of the province. The level of interest in education remains with teh educators and the educated. Who is listening to them while the ones spending money are grade 9 dropouts in an oil patch making twice as much as their teachers did per year?
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