OUR CLASS IS BROUGHT TO YOU TODAY BY……….

Advertisers target a captive market : school kids.

In Colorado Springs, Colo., public-school students pile into buses adorned with 7Up ads and Burger King logos. At Country Heights Elementary in Owensboro,, Ky., children read books to earn free pan pizzas from Pizza Hut.

Once relatively free from reminders of the outside commercial world, schools today are fast becoming billboards for corporate messages. Some school districts, like Colorado Springs, actively solicit advertisements to make money ; others let logos sneak in with free company-sponsored posters, brochures and coupons.. Whatever their port of entry into the schools, advertisements and product endorsements are creating a stir across the country. While supporters argue they are harmless, critics blast school-based commercial plugs as not only distasteful but manipulative and often educationally mislaeding as well.

High on the critics’hit list are the traditional forms of advertising that greet schoolchildren each day : the Reebok commercials on Channel One television, which is featured in many classrooms, the Coca-colla spots on Star Broadcasting radio, which is piped into schools, the slicks signs on school buses. With kids and young adults spending an estimated $ 102 billion annually and influencing their families to spend an additonal $ 130 billion, students are a powerful market and a captive audience for ads.

Even more disturbing, critics believe, are the « educational » posters and lesson plans sponsored by companies and trade groups. While some certainly offer sound information, many aare biased by the interests of their makers, often giving kids incomplete or incorrect data. ‘The cereal copanies critize all the fat in the diets but don’t mention the sugar,, », notes Consumers Union’s Charlotte Baecher.

Many experts fear that corporate messages are more powerful when delivered in schools_presumably institutions that students