Sounds like a bad idea to me:
With a minimum of public notice, a Milwaukee School Board committee will meet tonight to consider lifting the ban in MPS schools on paid advertising by private groups.
The issue has been controversial in many parts of the country, with many school districts seeing it as a way to raise much-needed money and others seeing it as inappropriate to subject students to paid advertising during school hours.
Where would something like this stop? “This locker brought to you by Trojan condoms.” or “Welcome the Washington High / Cricket Wireless Marching Band!” or “Class please open your Diet Mountain Dew U.S. History books to page 192…”
I’m only half joking here. The last thing kids in school need is even more advertising aimed at them, and don’t forget that you’d have to create a whole extra layer of bureaucracy in MPS to approve, monitor, and manage anything like this.
Of all the ideas that have ever come out of the administration building, this one would have to rank up there as one of the most poorly thought out and harmful to kids in MPS. As a parent who is very careful about the amount of advertising we let into our homes and currently deciding on which schools to send my soon to be 4 year old to, I can tell you right now that this would be a serious roadblock to me choosing MPS.
I live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI with my wife Jen, our daughter Emerson, and son Carter.
Proof that this is a bad idea is available on the bus. Yes, the bus. Transit TV runs commercials at the riders that are scams, outright deceitful, and awfully loud (preventing any kind of reading, or private thoughts). Now that the County is hooked on the money (maybe $30,000 a year) from TTV, it is most difficult to get them to change.
MPS needs to do an assessment of the revenue they (reasonably) expect to garner, and look at that sum and ask themselves just What it would buy that a penny on your property taxes would not buy. Yes, a penny. TTV revenue would be covered with a fraction of a penny per fare. Meanwhile it irritates the riders of choice that Transit needs to serve.
Bill Sell
Bill,
Thanks for giving me another reason not to ride the bus.
I used to live in NYC and the subways and buses always carried ads. But they were silent posters—nothing that demanded attention or interfered with reading or thinking.
What if they just took the money and used it to fund a class on advertising and personal finance? I know one thing that really bothers me about current education is that it does not prepare people for being in debt, which is odd since most of this country is. I’m sure we all know people who run their credit cards at max balance and max financing charges.
You’d think if there was one thing that public schooling would make sure they took care of, it would be teaching people to handle money. It’s been a while since I’ve used trigonometric substitution while integrating, but I can remember pretty well the last time I had to handle money, given that it was a couple hours ago.
What do you think about schools allowing soda and snack machines from certain vendors? Advertising in schools gives me the heebies too, but I also see that it’s already there. I walked by a huge Coke machine every day on my way to gym class in elementary school. We should probably pick one way or the other and go with it, rather than favoring a tiny few of vendors who want the ability to target such key demographics.
If done properly, it’s not a bad idea. For instance, the athletic fields could have advertising, along with the gym and cafeteria. I wouldn’t put anything in front of the building. I would propose that the money not go into the general fund, but to the indvidual schools. So, if a principal doesn’t think it’s a good idea, they don’t have to do it. Give the principals more say in where the money goes.
Matt, I see where you’re coming from, but I think there’s a bit of a distinction to made between the Coke machine in the hallway by the gym and open season for advertisers on young kids. As for your recommendations on curriculum, I agree 100%.
Dan, have to disagree with you and at the end of the day, you’re talking about maybe tens of thousands of dollars here anyways. On it’s own, that’s a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of the kind of budget MPS has, it’s nothing. I personally would rather pay an extra $0.02 per year on my property taxes to send my kids to a place that didn’t resemble Times Square.
What’s interesting is I’ve heard a lot of conservative parents express a similar feeling about sending their kids to a school system where that doesn’t re-enforce their values or beliefs. Along the same lines, how can I even consider sending my kids to an environment for 8 hours a day that directly contradicts with what I’m trying to teach at home, you know?
Smitty, off the point here (my apologies to Dan’s excellent blog) but if you don’t like Transit TV, please help us with your comments sent to me, or written, yourself at: http://www.milwaukeerenaissance.com/BusesAreGreen/TransitTV
But DO PLEASE ride the bus; we need your fare.
To write there contact me.
thanks
Bill
Dan, you’re right that it’s different. But Coke/Pepsi push into schools for the same reason Microsoft does. It’s important to set that brand image early. RC Cola would probably have to be $2 cheaper on a 12-pack before I’d buy it over Coke or Pepsi. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t even tell you what RC Cola tastes like. Probably the same as Coke. That’s valuable branding. The Coke machines would be fully functional (and cheaper) even without the huge illuminated red Coke sign on the front of them, and Coke is fully aware of that.
Obviously there’s a significant cost to having 1/3 of your architecture Windows, 1/3 Linux, and 1/3 Mac; most schools are going to have to pick one and stick with it… most likely which ever one is on the PCs that get donated to them. And we can’t have a soda machine from every brand in every school. I guess my point was just that there are definitely teams in many marketing departments who focus solely on how to get their brands into schools, and I think it’s important to be aware of that. Whether the taxpayer-funded org is picking the most sensible vendor for their needs or erecting barriers to competition is perhaps a matter of perspective.
MA’s move to ODF is an interesting instance of a state trying to avoid doing just this (amongst other reasons). I can tell you that — while it has gotten better in recent years with the rise of PDF — there’s no way my company’s public sector practice could ditch Office, because almost all state governments have Office (and Office only) in their standard desktop image.
How I managed to go from a Coke machine to MS Office… your guess is as good as mine.
Bill,
I regard Transit TV the same way I regard Airport TV. Airport TV is always tuned to CNN and if your flight is delayed (as it almost always is) you’re subjected to hours of the news—repeated endlessly, loudly, maddeningly.
Both are an obnoxious intrusion on my ability to sit and read (or think) quietly.
Yeah, but transit TV is junk compared to CNN. At least CNN has content that’s informative and professional. The stuff on transit TV is filler for the deceptive ads (FREE LAPTOPS!) which serve as the primary reason it exists.
Dan,
I’m not complaining about CNN’s content and professionalism, I’m complaining about the inability to avoid it at an airport. Hearing the news is fine, hearing it endlessly for hours is refined torture. Like the bus TV, it’s something you can’t turn off or escape.
They’re both incredibly obnoxious.