Published by the Center for a New American Dream

A quarterly report on consumption, quality of life and the environment

No. 19, SPRING 2002 ◆ $3
Page 3
Letter from
Betsy Taylor
Reading, Writing and ... Retail?
Schools Get Low Marks for Allowing Consumer Culture in the Classroom
Page 4 By Eric Brown
What’s Happening

T
he average American school in 2002 has where its mouth is, by holding what it’s calling a
at the Center become a high-tech, spiffed-up version of “National Ad Slam” contest for the most creative
Page 5 a Marrakesh bazaar—you just can’t turn effort to expel advertisers and commercialism
In Praise of your head without someone trying to sell you from schools during the 2001-2002 school year.
Unsung Heroes something. Or sell your kids something, to be a Students, teachers, parents, school board
little more precise. officials and concerned community members are
Page 8 Soda and candy machines in school lunch- encouraged to create an action plan to de-com-
Tracking the rooms are commonplace, millions of children are mercialize their school. The $5,000 first prize
Glimmer of Hope forced to watch television commercials for junk will be awarded directly to the school. For
Page 10 food and violent Hollywood films via Channel schools agreeing to forgo seemingly lucrative
One’s in-school television network, sports uni- contracts with companies peddling soft drinks,
Bad, Good and
forms are covered with logos, text books are candy and advertising, “the prize is a form of
Truly Ridiculous
filled with brand names and school curricula compensatory relief,” says Ruskin.
Page 12 include corporate-sponsored “lessons” about the Perhaps. However, the true costs of enter-
Book Reviews & environmental benefits of the oil industry, the ing into such agreements often go unnoticed.
Recommendations timber industry, the nuclear energy industry, and For example, in exchange for a $670,000 con-
the pesticide industry, just to name a few. tract with Pepsi, Montgomery Blair High
Page 13
So what’s a concerned citizen to do about School in suburban Maryland was required to
Fun Box:
protecting children from the impact of advertis- break a state law requiring that vending
Springtime 101
ing and marketing in our schools? Toss out the machines be turned off during school hours.
Page 14 marketers, says Gary Ruskin, executive director of Montgomery Blair principal Phillip Gainous
Step by Step: the non-profit Commercial Alert. Ruskin’s group continued on page 2
Take a CAFE Break is putting its
money
Page 15
Orwell’s Corner
Page 16
Please Help Us
Spread the Word
 Reading, Writing and ... Retail?
continued from page 1
admitted to openly defying the law in order to comply
with the contract.
Students in schools with Channel One, a twelve-
minute news and advertising program viewed daily in
12,000 middle and high schools across the country. In
return for requiring students to watch TV during class
time, Channel One lends the schools television equipment
and VCRs. One of the charter advertisers that tested Chan-
nel One before its launch in 1988 was Clearasil, which was
owned by Procter and Gamble at the time. As a marketing
executive that worked on the brand, Rob Erlichman noted
that P&G was willing to test the idea of paying "premium
rates comparable to those charged by
If adver tiser s MTV and other teen-targeted program-
ming" to show ads for Clearasil, based
profit by the on the idea that the “forced nature” of
exposure to the advertising would result
a r r a n g e m e n t , i t ’s in increased effectiveness. Erlichman
acknowledged P&G executives consid-
n o t s o c l e a r t h a t ered the potential controversy over this
new medium but noted that, “the fact
schools do.
that Channel One was an effective tool
to sell pimple cream was the single driving factor” in the
decision to support Channel One.
But if advertisers profited by the arrangement, it’s not
so clear that schools do. The hidden costs in lost class time
appear to far outweigh the free hardware a school might
receive, according to a 1998 study by Professor Alex Mol-
nar, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Center for the
Analysis of Commercialism in Education, and Max Sawicky,
an economist with the Economic Policy Institute. Accord-
ing to Molnar and Sawicky, this “free” equipment comes at
a very high price. Their research revealed that taxpayers in
the U.S. pay $1.8 billion dollars per year for the class time
lost to Channel One.
Campaigns to rid schools of commercialism, while dif-
ficult to pull off, have nevertheless proven effective in some
high-profile instances. Recently, the Madison, Wisconsin
school district successfully cancelled its exclusive contract
with Coca Cola, and is now able to offer milk and juice to
its students, a practice banned by the previous agreement.
In Seattle, a group called the Citizens’ Campaign for
Commercial-Free Schools successfully led a lobbying and
public education effort to convince the Seattle school sys-
tem to phase out Channel One and to place tough limits
on the kinds of advertising it allows on school property.
It is exactly this kind of creativity that Commercial
Alert is attempting to harness with its contest. The rules for
2 ◆ SPRING 2002
What They’re Saying...
This topic has been the subject of an ongoing conversa-
tion on the Center for a New American Dream’s online
discussion board, the New Dream Forum. Post your
own response at www.newdream.org/discuss. Here are
some excerpts from the conversation:
Get soda machines out of schools!
Posted by Arvin_P
It continues to mystify me that parents do not get more
angry about the fact that school districts are selling soda,
candy and other really unhealthy junk in schools.They
make the excuse that this is the only way to raise
money, but it seems that in fact, it’s just an EASY way to
raise money. I mean, why don’t we just put students to
work making license plates and dispense with the teach-
ing altogether?
Soda machines in schools
Posted by Redgirl
What really irritates me about schools making deals with
advertisers and junk food suppliers is that to children, school
officials are authority figures. Schools are supposed to act in the
best interests of kids, not in the best interests of big business.
Kids believe that if schools are selling Coke or Pepsi with
lunches, then this must be an acceptable nutritional choice. It’s
not, and I think there’s a conflict of interest when an institution
that’s supposed to educate my children about health and nutri-
tion is making money off of nutritionally void, high-calorie, caf-
feinated beverages.
the contest participants are simple:
Rule #1 Be creative.
Rule #2 Tell Commercial Alert, in writing, by May 15,
2002, what you’ve done to rid a school (or schools) of
advertisements. Include any creative or interesting doc-
uments or materials.
Rule #3 Don’t break the law or damage public or pri-
vate property.
In the end, says Ruskin, “our goal is simple—to
kick commercialism out of schools. And it seems to be
happening.”
For more information about Commercial Alert’s National Ad
Slam Contest, click on www.commercialalert.org or call 503-
235-8012.