Kids Need Protection From Market Exploit

Schools all over the nation are strapped for money. The combination of local, state and federal funds often doesn’t add up to a budget that allows districts to provide all the programs that they know would enhance students’ education.

Administrators increasingly face the prospect of cutting back or cutting out worthwhile parts of school curriculum so they can meet their budgets.

Searching for solutions to budget woes, some administrators have hit on another source of income - market research.

In one instance Massachusetts school kids taste-tested cereals and then answered questions about them. In another, students in New Jersey kept personal journals for a marketing survey.

One of the more insidious cases of market research in the classroom involved a technology company that supplies schools with “free” computers and Internet access and then monitors the kids’ online activity by age, gender and Zip code.

If you think these activities go a little wide of a school’s mission, you’re not alone. A bipartisan proposal in both houses of Congress would require that schools get parental permission before collecting data from students that companies use for commercial purpose. It would also require that parents be informed in writing of the data to be disclosed.

Some school districts such as Spokane’s District 81 already have a comprehensive screening system in place. Before the district allows any type of research a district panel must review it, says Terren Roloff, District 81 spokeswoman.

The district has strict criteria for allowing studies. So, typically the requests that are allowed are for academic research. Roloff said she knows of no commercial studies being done at the district now. But it’s possible that commercial research would be granted if a clear benefit to education could be established, she said. In any event, parents are always notified in advance of plans for using the classroom for outside research, she said.

Unfortunately, on a national level, not enough school districts have taken the time to consider the impact of research, especially marketing research, on the classroom.

We have turned to comprehensive testing to ensure our children are learning the basics. Yet in some districts, valuable class time is used to provide giant corporations with facts that will help them to sell more of their product.

School children, especially younger ones, tend to be more than willing to provide almost any information to an adult in authority. Do we really want those personal bits of data exploited for commercial gain?

Commercialization has gone beyond crass in many areas of life. Sporting events and venues so prominently display their sponsor’s name that sometimes the place or event is obscured. Product placement has become high art in movies and on TV.

But primary and secondary education has been relatively free of commercialism. That’s as it should be. It allows teachers and administrators the freedom to educate children in the best way they know how, answering only to the citizens who support the school system.

A law that would require notification when a classroom is being used as a test market makes sense. Parents have a right to choose when and if their children are to be used as guinea pigs.