Schools and Commercialism
by Cecile Andrews

Some of us remember when we had to spend time raising or lowering the hems on our skirts or spend hours at night putting rollers in our hair. (I'm not sure what the boys were doing.) All that changed with the Sixties, thank goodness. How wonderful to be free of dictatorial fashions!

But today's high school girls aren't free. Not long ago I was talking with a group of girls and they told me about being teased and taunted if they were not wearing expensive brand names. Some were told that their clothes were cheap and stupid! One girl said she felt like an outcast because she couldn't afford the clothes others were wearing.

I asked them what caused all this, and they talked about ads and commercials. "But," I said, "are there any ads in the schools?" Their chorus of "Oh, yes," was followed by a list of examples, like Coke cans in math book pictures or calendars picturing bags of Fritos.

This is no small problem. A lot of parents try to shield their kids from commercialism only to have them exposed to it in schools. Can we do anything about commercialism in schools? Lots of organizations are demanding that schools be "commercial-free zones." Schools, on the other hand, argue that they need money, so they're willing to sell their souls to the corporations. (Not their exact words.) But ironically, in the long run, commercialism could cost schools more because turning to commercialism could backfire - legislatures might begin to expect schools to raise their own funds.

But people are taking action. For instance, after an uproar over a proposal that would have allowed Pepsi to place their logo in sports facilities, the Berkeley school board voted to ban all advertising and logos - no ads in instructional materials and no logos on sports uniforms or equipment.

Would you advocate such a ban? Do you even know what's going on in the schools? Buttonhole a kid and see if they can turn up any of the situations listed below in their schools: (Most of them are pretty common in schools across the country.)

Some might wonder what's wrong with all of this? Corporations claim this is a freedom of speech issue. Certainly some examples are more egregious than others, but essentially, having ads in schools lets outsiders decide what goes on in the classroom, and commercials in the classroom blur the line between propaganda and education.

And, of course, parents and the kids pay the price. Many parents are just wringing their hands over their kids' extreme consumerism, because commercialism creates enormous appetites in the young. They've got to have the stuff to keep up.

But even more than the costs in terms of money, commercialism in the schools trivializes, undermines, and degrades one of the primary reasons for education: introducing students to the greatness and nobility of the human spirit - including their own. Commercialism reduces the human quest for transcendence into a desire for more stuff. It hypnotizes kids, making them crave stuff that will never satisfy - setting the stage, I would argue, for drugs and violence.

So what would you do about all of this? If you want ideas for taking action, visit the web site of The Center for a New American Dream to find out about their "Kids and Commercialism" campaign.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Fall 1999 issue of "Seeds & Circles", the quarterly newsletter of Seeds of Simplicity / The Simplicity Circles Project. See their extensive website on voluntary simplicity at: www.seedsofsimplicity.org

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