Mass. lawmakers weigh ban on all marketing in schools

Parent Cafe
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<p>Proposed ban, the most sweeping in the country, aims to stop virtually all marketing/advertising in schools. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/06/03/mass_lawmakers_weigh_ban_on_all_marketing_in_schools/[/url]”>http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/06/03/mass_lawmakers_weigh_ban_on_all_marketing_in_schools/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>From the Boston Herald:</p>

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<p><a href=“http://business.bostonherald.com/businessNews/view.bg?articleid=1004749[/url]”>http://business.bostonherald.com/businessNews/view.bg?articleid=1004749&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I haven’t read your links, but personally I, a Massachusetts resident, think a ban would be a great idea.</p>

<p>Why should schools do this marketing for companies for free?</p>

<p>And, when companies pay for the marketing, I don’t like the idea of income decisions determining curriculum decisions, nor the idea of school budgets becoming dependent on commerical funds.</p>

<p>Some years ago we received a flier from the school about some “educational” software product, and, on contacting the principal about it, I found he had just passed it through to parents without looking into it all – nice for the software company involved, with no benefit to the public school.</p>

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<p>As a Mass resident I don’t think this will fly. A record number of towns are putting property tax “overrides” on the ballot because our town budgets are so threadbare and the state is NOT providing sufficient support for education. Our town came very close to eliminating ALL budgetary support for inter-scholastic athletics, which would have left us with a $500 per student per sport fee if a kid wanted to play a sport. (Luckily our override passed, our citizens agreed to cough up an extra $2.7 million per year so we’d only have to lay off 20 school staff instead of 53. Now we only have to pay $125 per student per sport.) Schools are looking for any way they can find to raise money. I am in wholehearted agreement that we shouldn’t sell candy and soda in the building during the school day, but to tell the sports boosters that they can’t sell soda or Gatorade during sporting events is absurd. Our district is already very strict about what type of marketing materials go home with the students - the Superintendent personally signs off before anything that didn’t originate with the schools can be distributed. But as for PTA and sports group fundraisers… if the state is not going to fund the schools, don’t tie the volunteers hands about how they can raise money!</p>

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<p>Get out your checkbook then.</p>

<p>Alot of the promotional stuff done at schools does put money into asb funds.</p>

<p>In order to fund these EC’s a check has to come from somewhere. </p>

<p>Ripple effect in action.</p>

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<p>Disclaimer: I haven’t read the article.</p>

<p>Banning all marketing is an absolutely ridiculous idea. What about vending machines in the cafeteria? T shirts with logos (i.e. all shirts)? College board “checklist” posters? Purposeful fundraising for student groups? Baseball hats for the Red Sox? Vending at large sports games and other advertisement used to fund major high school sports like football? Sports jerseys with Adidas or Nike on them? Information about charity events distributed by NHS? Posters for summer programs and camps? Fliers about town summer sports leagues? Do you ban all products that market on the product, such as juice boxes? What about marketing within the school for school events? Etc.</p>

<p>Marketing is 1) a part of daily life, meaning that banning all marketing is an absurd idea since it’s pretty much impossible to implement, though of course boundaries could be set to allow some forms of marketing, and 2) useful, meaning that parents or students wouldn’t get to hear about opportunities that they really do want to know about, and worthwhile organizations wouldn’t be able to inform potential customers who want to know about their service. Many community organizations depend on school students finding out they exist, and if that didn’t happen some of these organizations would take a drastic downward turn simply due to the problem of spreading information. Families, as well, would have to look for the opportunities they explicitly want, but they would miss out on finding out about new opportunities that would have been of interest. As to my first point, marketing is ingrained in this society and culture, and it’s not something that it’s possible to escape from (and I personally don’t think that America should try). Every time you put on a shirt, you’re supporting and marketing for that company, particularly if the shirt has any name brand on it, such as a small horse in the upper chest corner on a polo. When you eat a bag of chips, you’re marketing for that chip company. Textbooks advertise for themselves, other texts, and accompanying CDs or other technology. If MA wants to ban all marketing, they should know that it will probably result in banning clothes, packaged food, and textbooks, as well.</p>