Monday, September 26, 2011

Is Scholastic scrammbling our childrens brains?

Simply put, Yes. Scholastic is slowing scrambling the brains of grade school children with corporate sponsored material in their classrooms. Thankfully, released in early August, Scholastic said that they will be cutting the corporate sponsored material by 40%. One of the biggest programs that was sponsored by the Egg Industry and was a lesson plan about the benefits of eating eggs.

I understand where Scholastic can see these as beneficial to students. Many of the programs do teach the students something valuable, like eating eggs. But unfortunately Scholastic is getting kick backs and so if the companies that help support these programs.With the egg program, it teaches kids to want eggs. They then go and tell their parents to purchase more eggs. In other words, it's like going to a store where the employees are solely paid on commission. They will tell you anything (how great you look in that flannel shirt, even though plaid is never flattering) just to get you to buy it. Also in these programs they are only showing the benefits and disregard any of the negatives. For example, another program is about Coal, where they teach children on how efficient coal is for energy, yet fail to talk about the negatives "like toxic waste, mining or greenhouse gases".

Children are already bombarded with enough advertisements on every thing else in their life (TV, Internet, radio), why force more on them during school?

New York Times: Children's Publisher Backing Off Its Corporate Ties.

No comments:

Post a Comment