It's a typical school day in America. 7 a.m. America's School Kid rolls out of bed, rubs her eyes, and gets ready for school. After grabbing a bite, she's ready to go.
But while she's walking out the door, she remembers that she left her algebra book on the table. She runs back and grabs it, remembering it's the one with the bright Reebok cover that her school issued her.
8 a.m. A yellow school bus picks up America's School Kid at the corner. It's top and sides are painted with large signs advertising 7-Up - "the uncola".
8:30 a.m. The yellow bus pulls up to school, and America's School Kid rushes through its doors, makes her way past a bulletin board beckoning her to visit Jan's Beauty Shop, and ducks into the homeroom class where her teacher is writing today's announcements on a class calendar sporting an insurance-company logo.
As our kid settles down to do her homework, today's 12-minute, ad-financed Channel One news broadcast for students begins to air. Four minutes into the programme she looks up to see a hip-looking teenager downing a Pepsi on screen - in the same ad currently being shown on MTV.
Book covers, billboards in school corridors, calendars, and broadcasts - these are some of the places corporate America places ads for kids to see in school. Commercial messages also reach kids in the classroom through ad-bearing and corporate-sponsored educational materials.
If we tracked our school kid through the rest of the day, we might find her learning about solid waste from worksheets provided free by Procter & Gamble, the makers of Tide detergent, Pampers, Luvs, and other products. The worksheets would guide her through a "product life cycle analysis" and a discussion of how disposable diapers can actually be more "green" than cloth ones.
Later, she might see other materials on solid waste from Browning-Ferris (a multinational company that collects, transports and treats waste material) and the Polystyrene Packaging Council.
In health class, America's kid might use a learning kit compliments of McDonald's or Kellogg's to help her learn about good nutrition. She'd have no trouble identifying the sponsor because its logo would be prominent on all components - poster, worksheets, and video.
But she might have trouble recognising that much of the information has a corporate slant. And if she expected to see something identifying it as the company's opinion, she'd find none.
Textbooks and other classroom materials produced by educational publishers and/or teachers used to be the fare from which students learned their lessons. But this is changing. As funds for classroom materials dwindle, schools are increasingly looking to corporate America to fill the void.
Consumers Union is the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine.
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