Today, we look for a way to support education. The
University of Houston's College of Engineering
presents this series about the machines that make
our civilization run, and the people whose
ingenuity created them.
This week's Sunday New
York Times tells a chilling tale about the
Seattle school system. Its budget has been cut by
12 percent and it's seriously short of money. The
school board has solved that problem with a simple
policy change. They've voted to accept corporate
advertising in middle and high schools.
For a long time, advertisers have known how
effective it is to reach kids. Now they have means
for getting into schools. As you and I worry about
the decay of science and math education,
advertisers offer to solve our problem, and it
seems too good to turn down. So Hershey Foods gives
Seattle kids a science video, along with a
curriculum guide for their teachers. They call it
the Chocolate Dream Machine. And Kellogg's offers
nutrition posters.
Elsewhere in America, third-graders use Tootsie
Rolls to practice their math, children learn to
read with software that features corporate logos
for junk food. We even find Prozac representatives
speaking to a school assembly on National
Depression Screening Day.
Education Professor Alex Molnar has written a book
about these inroads: Giving Kids the
Bu$iness. One widespread advertising gimmick
is Channel One. That's a twelve-minute daily TV
show transmitted to classrooms -- ten minutes of
educational material and two minutes of
advertising. In return for free TV receivers and a
satellite dish the school promises to run the
program in 90 percent of its classes for three
years.
Molnar also points to the most insidious of these
assaults. The Weekly Reader, which I
read as a child, was bought by the R. J. Reynolds
Company in 1991, and it has actually carried the
Old Joe Camel logo into our schools. Since then,
the Weekly Reader's anti-smoking
messages have been reduced by a factor of three.
Molnar also quotes research results that show Camel
sales to children rising from six million dollars a
year in 1988 to an astonishing $476 million in
1991. Tobacco companies are absolutely dependent on
making addicts of our children before they reach an
age of responsible choice, and now the schools are
abetting them.
All this calls to mind Gresham's Law: "Bad money
drives out the good." When essential civic services
grow desperate for support, the people trying to
run them turn a blind eye to the damage bad money
does. And there can be no doubt that this is bad
money. We badly need to beef up public education in
America -- especially in math and science. It would
be far cheaper to accomplish that with simple tax
money.
One Seattle teacher says she's made her plans for
using the Chocolate Dream Machine. "I'll say [to my
students], 'Why do you think Hershey's sent this to
teachers?'" She reminds us that once we've let the
Trojan horse in, the best anyone can do is try to
keep the guards from falling asleep.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
Stead, D., Corporations, Classrooms and
Commercialism. The New York Times, Education
Life, January 5, 1997, Section 4A, pp. 30-33,
41-47.
Molnar, A., Giving Kids the Bu$iness: The
Commercialization of America's Schools.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996.
Parker-Pope, T., Most Ad Executives Say Tobacco
Firms Target Children. The Wall Street
Journal, Sunday, December 18, 1996, p.
B5.
The Engines of Our Ingenuity
is Copyright © 1988-1995 by John H.
Lienhard.
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