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  The Society for Consumer Advocates and Mavens

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COMMERCIALIZED CHILDRENS' SCHOOLS

FREE study materials to schools may include promotions from the sponsorl. These messages may be manipulative or biased.

For example, meat packers may suggest in their free educational materials that meat eaters may grow taller yet do not mention what may possibly happen to your vital organs if you eat too much meat.

Other industry sponsors have been accused of promoting questionable ideas concerning the environment, like the wholesale harvest of publicly owned forests in national preserves! Cereal-makers supplying free supplies to schools may suggest that snacking on cereal can be considered part of a healthy, everyday eating habit!

Another sponsor calling itself The Council Of Wildlife Conservationists actually is the NRA, the National Rifle Association! Was it the NRA that once declared there are no truly endangered species? Some scientists believe that 99% of the Earth's species are already extinct with another species becoming extinct every 20 minutes! Schools use FREE "sponsored" learning materials because they are unable to afford them otherwise. Commercial sponsors of learning materials are considered by critics to be "blurring the line between education and commercial propaganda". Information meant for children should possibly be subjected to higher standards compared to information aimed at adults.

Additionally, children may be asked to sell magazine subscriptions to unsuspecting parents, relatives and friends, and in some cases, almost beg you to buy them with emotional pleas like, "Please help me and my school....I love you!"

A corporation may offer free supplies or equipment like TVs, VCRs, and more in exchange if the children sell a certain amount of or collect package labels of the corporation's products.

Too many schools today enter into commercial partnerships with Big Business? Schools and corporate conglomerates may not have the same interests in mind, despite the claims of the corporations.

If companies want to sell product, should schools be teaching children to think critically about promotional and advertising messages, their influence and motivations? Some financially strapped schools are even allowing corporate sponsored satellite TV broadcasts to enter the classroom too. At times it may be hard to tell the advertisements from the educational material and program! The ads are usually built around program content and utilize all the latest persuasive tricks and gimmicks. Commercialized learning TV programs may be less likely to cultivate "higher thinking" capabilities compared to printed materials.

Once the school accepts the satellite TV equipment and programs they may be forced by contracts to make students watch the promotion of all sorts of commercial goods and services, from junk foods to high priced items. The whole concept of corporate sponsored educational TV forces students to watch more TV!

Even foreign governments may contribute to certain corporate sponsorships for the purpose of image building or image cleansing under the guise of producing objective, informational educational materials and programs. Commercialized study materials can even be used to improve or repair tarnished corporate images for future generations. A safe sex video may do as much to promote male contraceptive products as it does promoting safe sex!

Students can get confused and think if it is advertised in school then it must be ok or it would not be allowed!

Textbooks go through rigorous approval processes yet corporate sponsored learning materials and TV broadcasts may escape review completely! Create a child's tastes and desires at an early age and possibly own them for years!

SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE: the book: MARKETING MADNESS BY JACOBSON AND MAZUR

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