Let's keep advertising -- and market research -- out of the classroom

[Gary Ruskin]

Commercial Alert					April 18, 2000

Following is an article from the April 18 issue of School Board News.
<http://www.nsba.org/sbn/00-apr/041800-8.htm>

Guest Viewpoint: Let's keep advertising -- and market research -- out of
the classroom
By Gary Ruskin 

	4/18/00 -- Corporate marketers have kids in their cross-hairs.
"Virtually every consumer-goods industry, from airlines to zinnia-seed
sellers, targets kids," says child marketing expert James U. McNeal. 

	Increasingly, these marketers see children as an economic resource to
be exploited, much like iron ore or raw timber. "If you own this child
at an early age, you can own this child for years to come," explains
Mike Searles, ex-president of Kids-R-Us, a major children's clothing
store. "Companies are saying, 'Hey, I want to own the kid younger and
younger.'" 

	In the battle for what ad agencies call "mind share," marketers want to
deploy ads where kids will see them. Because children are required by
law to attend school, marketers want their ads to appear in schools,
too. 

	The corporate conscription of the compulsory education laws is now
commonplace. Take Channel One, for example, a marketing company that
shows a 12-minute "lite news" program with two minutes of ads to about 8
million children each school day. It brags to advertisers about how it
harnesses the coercive power of the state to compel schoolchildren to
watch ads. 

	Joel Babbit, former president of Channel One, said the program provides
a means of "forcing kids to watch two minutes of commercials." 

	The atmosphere in school is splendid for selling, Babbit says. "The
advertiser gets a group of kids who cannot go to the bathroom, who
cannot change the station, who cannot listen to their mother yell in the
background, who cannot be playing Nintendo, who cannot have their
headsets on." 

	The same is true for the ZapMe! Corp., which puts computers in schools
as educational tools but which also function as sophisticated
advertising delivery, market research, and surveillance machines. 

	A Wit Capital financial analysis of the ZapMe! Corp. notes that ZapMe!
helps marketers "looking to capture the 'eyeballs' and 'e-wallets' of a
captive and attractive demographic" -- that is, schoolchildren. 

	These ads in the classroom consume perhaps the most precious resource
of the school day -- time. In schools that show Channel One, students
spend the equivalent of one full week each school year watching it,
including nearly one class day watching ads. 

	A 1998 study by Max Sawicky and Alex Molnar, The Hidden Costs of
Channel One, concluded that Channel One's cost to taxpayers in lost
class time is $1.8 billion per year. 

	There's something seriously out of whack here. Taxpayers pay to
construct public classrooms. They pay to maintain them and provide
staff. Yet now companies like Channel One and ZapMe! have figured out
how to use those taxpayer-funded classrooms as amphitheaters for their
ad campaigns aimed at innocent and impressionable kids. 

	These companies promote products to which many parents object. Take
violent entertainment, for example. Channel One advertises violent
movies such as "Supernova," "The Mummy," and "The World is Not Enough." 

	Many parents (and teachers) are rightly worried about school violence.
They certainly don't want schools to promote entertainment that
glamorizes violence and gore. 

	Another example is junk food. Childhood obesity is a major public
health problem. An article in the Oct. 27, 1999, issue of the Journal of
the American Medical Association states, "The United States has
experienced alarming increases in obesity among children and
adolescents." 

	An accompanying editorial notes the role of the "marketing of snack
foods" in the obesity epidemic.

	Yet guess who's marketing those junk foods? The public schools. 

	Channel One promotes a parade of junk food and fast food to
impressionable children. Coke and Pepsi, which have a major presence in
many schools, are laden with sugar, excess calories, caffeine, and other
additives that can contribute to obesity, tooth decay, and many other
health problems. Is this why taxpayers support public schools -- to
promote unhealthy eating habits that lead to diseases like these? 

	On top of all this is the question of values. There is growing concern
about the moral atmosphere of the classroom. 

	Channel One imposes a moral atmosphere of materialism. It promotes the
message that buying is good and will make you happy and that consumption
and self-gratification are the goals and ends of life. 

	Advertisers also degrade the moral authority of schools and teachers.
Schools that show corporate ads implicitly endorse the products
advertised -- including violent or sexualized entertainment and junk
food. 

	In effect, school boards let advertisers rent the moral authority of
the school for the purpose of selling. So doing, they cheapen the school
and undercut the painstaking efforts of teachers and administrators who
strive to keep up a high standard of integrity. 

	Perhaps worst of all, the marketing invasion of the classroom opens
children to the prying eyes of self-interested adults. It totally
violates the trust of parents when they send their kids off to school
each day. 

	The ZapMe! Corp actually conducts electronic surveillance of children
in school. It monitors the activities of the children on the Web for
commercial purposes. 

	According to The Associated Press, ZapMe! breaks the data down "by age,
sex, and zip code. It delivers this information to advertisers and
marketers, who use it to target students in school with laser-like
precision." And ZapMe! allows its advertisers to collect the personal
information of schoolchildren, including their names, addresses, and
telephone numbers. 

	Compulsory education laws are for teaching. We ought not let
corporations use them to force a captive audience of schoolchildren to
watch ads or to secretly extract market research from them. 

	It is not the function of the public schools to deliver impressionable
children to those who would use them for economic gain. Some things just
shouldn't be for sale. Children are one of them. 
<---------article ends here--------->

Commercial Alert opposes corporate exploitation of children and the
excesses of commercialism, advertising and marketing. Commercial Alert's
website is at <http://www.essential.org/alert/>.

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-- 
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Gary Ruskin | Commercial Alert 
1611 Connecticut Ave. NW Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009
Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406
http://www.essential.org/alert/ | mailto:gary@essential.org
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