The Little Kiddy Went to Market: The Corporate Assault on Children

316 Pages·2009·5.47 MB·English

by  Beder, Sharon;Gosden, Richard;Varney, Wendy

This Little Kiddy Went to Market
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This Little Kiddy
Went to Market
The Corporate Capture of Childhood
Sharon Beder
with Wendy Varney and Richard Gosden
PLUTO PRESS
www.plutobooks.com
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First published 2009 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Sharon Beder 2009
The right of Sharon Beder, Wendy Varney and Richard Gosden to be identifi ed as
the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 2916 1 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 2915 4 Paperback
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to
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Contents
List of Figures, Tables and Boxes vi
Acknowledgements viii
1 Introduction 1
2 Turning Children into Consumers 6
3 Turning Play into Business (Wendy Varney and Sharon Beder) 23
4 Branding Childish Identities 37
5 Teaching Consumer Values 51
6 Turning Schools into Businesses 67
7 Making Schools Accountable 81
8 Business Campaigns 95
9 Made to Order 112
10 Dumbing Down Future Citizens 127
11 Teaching Corporate Values 143
12 Privatising Schools 158
13 Turning Schools into Markets 174
14 Privatisation Proponents 188
15 Controlling Wayward Children (Richard Gosden) 205
16 Conclusion 222
Notes 224
The Authors 288
Index 289
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List of Figures, Tables and Boxes
FIGURES
2.1 Percentage of Overweight Children Around 10 Years Old 18
6.1 Declining Corporate Income Taxes 1950–2004 72
8.1 Edward Rust’s Connections 96
8.2 Some Standards and Testing Advocacy Groups and Some of the
Organisations that Fund Them 103
8.3 McGraw-Hill Companies, Products and Connections 109
8.4 Publishers Share of K–12 Market 110
12.1 Estimated Growth and Coverage of EMOs 1998–2008 170
14.1 Voucher and Charter School Advocacy Groups and Some of the
Foundations that Fund Them 191
14.2 Key Think Tanks Promoting School Privatisation and Foundations
that Fund Them 200
14.3 Some Key Individuals and Their Associations with Think Tanks 202
TABLES
2.1 Percentage of Purchases Resulting From Nagging 13
3.1 Some Barbie Dolls and Accessories Promoting Brands 23
5.1 Educational versus Commercial Agendas 65
6.1 The New Language of School Reform 69
9.1 Enterprise versus Citizen Education 123
9.2 Some International Enterprise Programmes 124
10.1 Educational Paradigms 134
12.1 Charter School Teaching Staff – Some Figures 162
12.2 Performance of Charter Schools – Some Studies 164
12.3 Some Different Types of Schools 173
14.1 Key Individuals Funding the School Privatisation Efforts 190
14.2 Voucher and Tax Credits Referenda 192
15.1 Children and Adolescents Aged 9–17 Claimed to Have Disorders 219
BOXES
2.1 Extent of Television Watching – Some Figures 8
2.2 Children and Alcohol 10
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Figures, Tables and Boxes vii
2.3 Food Advertising – Some Figures 15
2.4 Some Studies on the Impact of Advertising on Children’s Diet 17
2.5 Changing Diets – Some Figures 18
2.6 Some Denial Studies from the Food Industry 19
2.7 Some Advertising Regulations in Various Nations 21
3.1 Cartoon Characters and Cigarettes 30
3.2 Alcohol and Tobacco 31
4.1 Children’s Brand Recognition – Some Study Findings 40
4.2 Marketing Conferences – Some Quotes 47
4.3 Materialism in Young People – Some Study Findings 49
5.1 Junk Food in Schools – Some Examples 55
5.2 Some Coupon Redemption Schemes 57
5.3 Alloy Media and Marketing 59
5.4 Some Examples of Contests and Scholarships 62
5.5 More Examples of Product Placements in Class Activities 64
6.2 School Devolution Around the World 78
6.3 Funding Inequities – Some Figures 80
7.1 Accountability and Testing in Various Nations 84
8.1 Some More Business Advocacy Groups 104
8.2 Money to be Made from Testing – Some Figures 107
9.1 Eliminating Recess – Some Figures 116
9.2 Organisations Fostering Enterprise Education in the UK 123
10.1 ‘Back to Basics’ in Mathematics Teaching 135
10.2 Open Court by McGraw-Hill 137
10.3 Membership of the UK Qualifi cations and Curriculum
Authority (QCA) 138
10.4 Standard English 139
10.5 Excerpt of Fifth-Grade Citizen Education Content Standard 140
10.6 Organisations Behind the National Voluntary Content Standards 141
12.1 Online or Virtual Schools 164
12.2 Academies – Some Problem Cases 167
12.3 Education Action Zones (EAZs) 169
12.4 Education Alternatives (EAI) / Tesseract 171
12.5 Outsourcing School Meals 172
14.1 Some More Privately Funded Voucher Programmes 195
14.2 Steps Towards Privatisation 195
15.1 Examples of Childhood Mental Disorders 207
15.2 Diagnostic Criteria for Attention Defi cit/Hyperactivity Disorder 209
15.3 Sample Questions in TeenScreen Interviews 220
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Nina Lansbury-Hall for her research assistance with
Chapter 11: Teaching Corporate Values. Also thanks to the Campaign for
Commercial-Free Education in Ireland for permission to reproduce Table 5.1:
Educational versus Commercial Agendas and Professor Geoff Whitty for
permission to use a table from his book Devolution and Choice in Education in
compiling Table 6.1: The New Language of School Reform.
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1
Introduction
It is easy to exploit children – any fool can do it. It takes both
strength and intelligence not to do so.
C. Glenn Cupit1
Amanda’s parents gave her an mp3 player for her thirteenth birthday. She had
been nagging them for an iPod for months but they didn’t understand, as her
peers did, the importance of the iPod brand. So they got her another brand that
they thought offered better value for money. Instead of being delighted she was
depressed. It was the same with everything she had. Her mobile was two years old
yet her parents couldn’t understand the importance of having the latest model. She
was sure that it was because she had second- or third-rate versions of everything
that she was not popular at school.
Amanda’s brother Andrew was in the bathroom vomiting. He had a school
test today and he didn’t do well in tests even though his teachers usually gave
him good marks for school projects and essays. He thought too much about the
questions and was able to think of more than one reasonable answer and this
meant he took too long to do the test.
If he failed today’s test Andrew would have to do extra classes on Saturday
mornings and might have to give up music classes to make way for more reading
classes. Andrew’s parents wouldn’t mind too much if this happened because they
had to pay extra fees for those music classes. But music classes were the only
part of school that Andrew liked. Otherwise he hated school. It was so boring!
They never studied anything that he could relate to and it was all so repetitive. It
seemed to be all tests and practice tests and preparing for tests.
Andrew’s poor test results were likely to affect his ability to get into a good
secondary school; he might have to go to the dilapidated school across the river
where students have to pass through a metal detector and wear their coats in class
because the heating doesn’t work.
Their little sister Angie was having a tantrum in the kitchen because Mummy
wouldn’t buy the sugary cereal with Shrek on the packet that she saw on television.
Amanda thought it wouldn’t be long before Angie would be taking those little
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