Advertisers Entering the Classroom, Study Says

Product promoters are increasingly gaining easy access to American schools with advertising and often are including self-serving plugs for their wares in donated teaching materials, a consumer group said Tuesday.

Consumers Union said the developments threaten the integrity of the educational process and urged teachers, parents and school officials to ban ads from schools and be more demanding about donated educational materials.

“No educator who uses these materials argues that commercialism is good,” Charlotte Baecher, education services director at Consumers Union, told a news conference in presenting the results of an 18-month study.

“They may feel that the end justifies the means. They’re trying to do what is best for the kids. But what we’re saying is commercials and commercialism have no place in the classroom,” she said.

The nonprofit organization, which publishes Consumer Reports magazine, said chronic school budgetary problems and growing commercialism in society as a whole have made schools more vulnerable to commercial encroachment. At the same time, it noted competition has risen among marketers to reach the youth market, which has enormous spending power of its own and the ability to influence tens of billions of dollars more spent by parents.

The study, titled “Captive Kids: A Report on Commercial Pressures on Kids at Schools,” found advertising has proliferated at schools in recent years.