Look at your town's high school sports teams for a minute; what is the difference between school teams now and 30 years ago? Sponsors. Schools are being sponsored by well known companies in order to receive things that they may never get otherwise. The truth is, businesses have been involved in schools for as long as many of us can remember. They make donations that help out in many areas, and provide scholarships for well deserving students. Things like these are positive for both the school and the business, but when does corporative involvement target students not as learners, but as consumers? (Commercial Advertising) In other words, when does it go too far? .
Any student who receives a scholarship or award from a business will appreciate that business for a long time. After all, they helped pay their way through college and maybe even University. Some school sports programs are also appreciative of businesses that donate sports equipment and score clocks, the more expensive things, to their program just for the extra advertising. It's these "no strings attached" deals that give us a positive image of business involvement in schools. Here in Cranbrook, it doesn't seem as if anything bad could ever come from such a thing; for, we have been protected from the marketing ideas that are floating around in other cities. Fortunately for us, we have only witnessed the bare minimums of marketing: vending and pop machines, athletic equipment and scholarships. And hopefully, it will always be like this.
In other cities however, schools have no choice but to surrender to the "help" of commercial advertising in their schools. They need the computers, and the text books, and will go to any cost to receive them. Our schools are being taken hostage to commercial businesses. Coke machines have inundated our hallways, advertising posters have been hung everywhere in elementary schools, and commercially biased curricular materials are increasing.
