There is inadequacy of teaching materials in the school systems today. This has prompted a situation where educators use outside sourced materials to supplement what they have. In so doing, the school administrations and educators nationwide use educational materials manufactured by companies with a purpose of helping the students. However, these sources also consist of advertisement information. It seems that most American companies take advantage of the teaching aids to market their products to teachers and students. Furthermore, the companies make use of media corporations to advertise their supposed teaching materials to teachers, students, and parents. Today, such corporations have flooded the schools. Even though they seem to be concerned with the student’s academics, their main aim is to market their products and improve their productivity. They are more concerned with the profits they get than providing essential, equitable, non-commercial and captivating study materials to the schools.
In the business arena today, institutions come up with study materials targeting the youth in schools. This can either be interpreted as a strategy to advertise their products to increase their profitability or as a way of taking part in social responsibility. This brings about an ethical dilemma since the institutions may be in to take their social responsibility but again they may be exploiting the situation. According to Foxman, Mateescu, and Bulger(2018), the main objectives of corporations is to maximize their profitability. They regard the school children as a lucrative market as they are helpful in three probable markets. First, children are able to buy educational materials for themselves today. Secondly, they are able to convince their parents to buy the study materials for them. Lastly, children are the future teachers and parents and will be able to purchase the study materials for their own children or students. Schools in the United States have been using study materials manufactured by industries.
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The public education is guided by marketplace vision rather than political equality, free thought, and social responsibility vision (Foxman, Mateescu & Bulger, 2018). This gives an implication that they value profits and material gain than creative understanding and advancement of critical thinking. In this case, the school administration has the responsibility to decide the sources of educational materials. The school can choose either Channel One or industry-sponsored materials.
The industry-sponsored resources specifically Channel One are pressurizing the students, teachers and school systems. They use them to advertise their products and improve their sales in the name of promoting education. These companies have school children as their target market. This is because they can easily maneuver them into thinking, feeling and even acting in a manner that makes purchasing their products imminent. Their main purpose is not derived from the desire to provoke the student's thoughts, critical thinking and educating rather, it is derived from the desire to make more profits.
According to Khanna (2016), Channel One Company utilizes electronic presents to lure students, teachers, and the school system to buy their products. This is more of advertising for their products than selling for any educational purpose. The giveaways are awarded to schools to allow the Channel One business adverts to be publicized without being interrupted for a number of days in the course of the school calendar. This kind of strategy is focused on benefiting the company and not the school. The students, educators, and schools are indirectly being used as a market.
Even though the institutions that utilize this tactic may seem to be concerned with education and taking part in social responsibility, reviewing their motives critically shows otherwise. Their main objective is advertising their products to increase their productivity. Such companies are aware that the schools do not have adequate study materials. They take advantage of this situation and manipulate schools into buying their study materials that are loaded with advertisement information.
The companies also offer discounts to parents and teachers to lure them into buying their study materials. The discounts and giveaways are meant to convince the schools, students, and parents that the company cares about education and is partaking in social responsibility. But these discounts are just marketing strategies established to reach the school lucrative market.
According to Molnar (2018), the schools provide a great opportunity for the institutions. This is because the teachers want more study resources to help in their student's academics, and the students are able to purchase the study materials for themselves. Moreover, school children have consequential impacts on what their parents buy, this includes their study materials. The companies, therefore, provide educational materials full of advertisement information for schools.
The educational materials provided by the industry-sponsored companies such as Channel One are substantially beneficial to the students, educators, and the entire school system (Molnar, 2018). One of the benefits is that institutions like Channel One give helpful bonuses to learning institutions for buying their products. Such gifts include videos, posters, books, multimedia kits reproducible teaching sheets, and learning machines that are substantial for teaching. The machines help in making teaching easier and learning interesting.
However, the company's give these learning supports for their own gain since their condition is to have their products advertised for a long period without being interrupted. According to Opree, Buijizen, Van Reijmersdal and Valkenburg, the companies use this gifts to lure the school, teachers, and students into giving their consent to such agreement. Most of their programs contain biased and incomplete information plus unconditional promotion for the institution and its commodities. This implies that the disadvantages of these resources outweigh their advantages.
The school is not the right place for commercial business. It is even worse when a company masquerades as learning programs or resources and give biased information or misrepresentations with a purpose of marketing the sponsor company. Some information in the company advertisement is misleading to the school children. For example, a nutrition program may indicate taking chocolate daily as a healthy habit. Such information is misleading and it will lure children to buy chocolates every day since they perceive it as a healthy diet as it was presented to them.
The main objective for the companies that help schools with study materials is to increase their profits but not to educate. They impose their products in the children's minds, nurture future market and establish their product loyalty. Most public schools agree to such due to the inadequacy of resources and lack of enough funds. This positions the school children in an unconducive environment to cultivate their critical thinking, misinterpretation of unbiased information, and free thinking.
The industry-sponsored resources introduce commercial business in the school system and this changes the essence of education. Advertisements being put directly into the school curriculum, periodicals, and textbooks is a very alarming type of business in schools. This is because it combines education with marketing. The school is not the right place for any sort of marketing.
The values and ideologies that intrusion of business in schools impose in children is also a ground for concern. Instead of focusing on values and ideologies regarding social justice, political equality, academic knowledge, and nurturing the children’s free-thinking, it focuses on imposing spending values, greedy attitudes, fascination and desire for money rather than for knowledge and truth.
Considering the fact that students are naïve captive audiences that are immature and inferior, it is easier for the advertisers to manipulate them for their benefits. Children are expected by the society to be obedient, they are easily influenced by the advertisers. This means that the children easily believe the contents of advertisement even when they are biased and sometimes misleading. This brings about another ground for concern. Advertisers violate the moral right of students to have a commercial free education.
According to the Utilitarian theory, every action should be weighed with regard to its outcomes or consequences. This implies that before taking any action, the profits and costs should be analyzed for all the shareholders on a personal level. This perspective aims at maximizing the benefits for everyone while minimizing the harm and costs. According to this theory, the study materials offered by the industry-sponsored institutions pose a number of ethical issues. This is because they are biased and are focused on gaining profits for the sponsor companies rather than benefiting the students. In this case, all the stakeholders do not benefit from the deal equally. The harms on the side of school are more than the benefits thus making it unethical.
Conclusively, most companies that provide schools with educational materials are more concerned with increasing their profits rather than being educative. These companies take advantage of the fact that most public schools are underfunded and have inadequate resources prompting them to agree to any deal that comes their way. Moreover, school children are lucrative markets for such companies since they can buy the resources for themselves and can also convince their parents to buy them. School children can be easily manipulated into buying anything and are therefore a captivating audience for such companies. However, the intrusion of commercial business in schools has negative impacts on the students. The best materials that schools can use for learning purpose are educational non-promotional resources that are obtained from non-profit institutions.
References
Foxman, M., Mateescu, A., & Bulger, M. (2018). Advertising in Schools. Data & Society Research Institute. Retrieved from https://datasociety.net/pubs/ecl/Advertising_primer_2016.pdf
Khanna, P. (2016). Parents Perception of Influence of Television Advertisement on Children. International Journal of Emerging Research in Management &Technology , 5 (7), 65-73.
Molnar, A. (2018). Giving kids the business: The commercialization of America's schools . Routledge.
Opree, S. J., Buijzen, M., Van Reijmersdal, E. A., & Valkenburg, P. M. (2014). The Effect of Advertising on Children’s Materialism.
