Don't Even Think About It: Report Highlights Harms of School Commercialism

Image courtesy Marshall-Wythe School of Law/flickr.

Commercialism in schools is a hotly-contested topic. While many parents, educators & concerned citizens believe that the creeping influence of marketers and corporations is harmful to students, who are a captive audience for several hours a day, school districts increasingly desperate for money find themselves engaging in "partnerships" with corporations to bring in some extra cash, insisting such efforts are necessary because they have no better alternatives. Corporations also gain access not just to what students see on school buses, lunchroom walls, stadium signs & book covers, but on what students are actually taught, providing free lesson plans to classrooms and "partnering" with school districts to develop curriculum and special programs.

Every year the National Education Policy Center, an organization that conducts "high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions," releases a report focusing on some aspect of the impact of commercialism in schools on students and the community. Last month they published their newest report, "The Educational Cost of Schoolhouse Commercialism," which focuses on how "corporate commercializing activities harm children educationally."

This year's report considers three types of educational harm associated with corporate influence in schools:

1. The contradiction of what students learn in school (such as the disconnect between teaching about healthy eating while offering junk food in vending machines or unhealthy food in the cafeteria);
2. The displacement of educational activities by commercializing activities;
3. The abandonment of critical thinking skills surrounding corporate messages, bias, and products in schools.

This last point is especially important, say the report's authors. The teaching of critical thinking skills is already hampered by the education system's focus on memorization and standardized testing. As they say,

"Commercializing activities in school foster a common-sense culture that favors both the specific brands that get their advertising into the school and a noncritical mindset that facilitates the effectiveness of such advertising. At their most simplistic, corporate commercializing activities discourage thinking of any kind ('Hungry? Grab a Snickers!'). When more complex, they discourage aspects of critical thinking that might lead to disagreement with or discrediting of the sponsor‘s message—especially critical thinking skills having to do with identifying and evaluating sponsors‘ points of view and biases, considering alternative points of view, and generating and evaluating alternative solutions. They insinuate sponsors‘ points of view or products into the daily life of the school in a way that students accept them without thinking about them. They also (either actively or passively) inhibit critical thought about those points of view or products.

"Even if teachers explicitly teach critical thinking in their classes, they would be unlikely to demonstrate its applicability with respect to corporate messages when those corporate messages are endorsed by the school or district."

The report also highlights the importance of looking at the collective influence of corporate influence on students:

"It is important to note that whereas any single piece of advertising may seem trivial, all advertising contributes to a global message reflecting the values, stories, and morality that promote a consumer culture. As a result, advertising affects how children think about their families, relationships, environment, society, friendships, and selves. While no one particular advertisement or advertising campaign has this effect on its own, the underlying message of consumerism as the highest good is 'sold' by every advertising campaign, regardless of its relative success promoting an explicit product."

In addition to outlining the role and necessity of critical thinking strategies and how commercialization can hamper that, the report also offers several examples of "commercializing activities" in schools for the 2010-2011 school year, from partnerships with Nike to curriculum from fossil fuel companies, to Google virtual science fairs, and corporate-sponsored contests to win money for schools.

Although the document is more than 40 pages long, the report itself is only a dozen or so pages and is well-worth the read.

Read the complete report.

~ Marsha

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