Obama’s Speech is not the Only Back to School Issue We Should Be Talking About
So, the President spoke to school age children all across America today and he didn’t say anything that previous presidents haven’t already said. The main message was stay in school, stick with it, work hard and you too can make something out of your life…….like JK Rowling and Michael Jordan.
His speech didn’t exactly live up to the propaganda claims from media pundits like Glenn Beck. If fact, it was very similar to the student addresses that President’s Reagan and George Bush Sr. made during their tenure in the White House.
However, there is another broadcast that happened on September 8 that is also directed at education in this country that hasn’t received much attention at all. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the media conglomerate Viacom have put together their own education program called Get Schooled. Now, in my neighborhood, to get schooled is not a good thing, and that could very well be the outcome of this program, which has the backing of corporate money.
According to education researcher Kenneth Libby, “Get Schooled is a five-year partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Viacom – with sponsorships from Capital One, AT&T, and NYSE Euronext – will kick off with a thirty minute documentary about the role of education in the lives of NBA superstar Lebron James, American Idol’s Kelly Clarkson, and President Obama, and the role of education in the lives of their support staff.”
The “Get Schooled” website – which both compliments and advertises the TV event – offers us a glimpse into how corporate America and the Gates Foundation have subtly shaped the way the public views education. In attempt to connect young people with work, inspire social change, and encourage dropouts to return to school, the “Get Schooled” website has offered visitors three choices upon arrival at the initiative’s digital doorstep: “I want to find an awesome job,” “I want to change the system,” and “I want to get back in school.”
Once you navigate the slick website for Get Schooled you might come to the same conclusion that University Professor and education writer Henry Giroux called the Corporate Stranglehold on Education. What Giroux means by a corporate stranglehold is the increasing private/public partnerships’ with the public education system, which ultimately means that private/corporate entities have an increasing influence on what students will learn.
Other manifestations of the corporate invasion into the public education system have been Channel One – the hyper-commercial TV program that is pumped into hundreds of schools nationwide; supplemental “educational” resources that are provided free to teachers, such as environmental responsibility videos from Shell Oil; cafeteria food and soda contracts where chain businesses like Pizza Hut & Taco Bell food is sold to students and Coca Cola machines line the halls.
We mentioned last week the action that Stop Targeting Our Kids took to draw attention to back to school marketing pressures. STOK also has a useful document that looks at the back to school marketing they encountered in the Grand Rapids area and retail stores and advertising campaigns in West Michigan media.
Unfortunately, there hasn’t been and will not likely be much coverage of this type of invasive propaganda targeting school age children. The President’s speech should be the least of our concerns on this matter.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 
Though I am not in Obama’s camp, the reaction of right-wing of parents not wanting their children to hear his speech baffled and upset me. These same parents seem to be oblivious to the issues you raise here, e.g, the corporate infiltration into our schools that not only recreates kids as consumers but also damages their physical health by encouraging unhealthy snacks and drinks and urges them to cast themselves into dangerous stereotypical gender roles, i.e. the macho boy and the sex-object girl. (The case of the Hopkins High School quarterback charged with rape may be one example.)
I worked in children’s educational publishing, and one of the legal issues we dealt with in developing materials was that there are a few states (sadly, very few) have stringent laws about marketing or branding in school materials. That is to say, no mention of brand names or products could be made in any textbook or supplemental materials. Because we were selling materials in all 50 states, we constantly had to edit or redo manuscripts from authors who would, for example, use M&Ms in a counting exercise or talk about brand-name snack foods in a science article.
Corporations can continue their offensive national advertising campaigns in these states and can’t be stopped, but their influence on school grounds can be eradicated by these laws–in some states they are not allowed to provide teachers with “free” materials written to their agendas or to sell their food products within schools. They are not allowed to put on any kind of events for students in these states or give away samples within a certain distance from school property. Of course, the laws keep shifting because the companies continue to lobby to get around them, but they do provide some defenses.
Michigan is obviously not a state that has these protective laws. Although I think STOK’s goal of working directly with schools to raise awareness is a good idea, is the group also thinking of pushing for this type of legislation here?
Here’s a link to a 1999 article of an incident that actually spurred stronger legislation in California:
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/public/math_texts.html
And what’s with the Gates Foundation? What kid would want to “get schooled”??
Kate, thanks for sharing this information. I don’t know if STOK is looking into this type of legislation, but you can contact them at stokaction@gmail.com.