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School commercialism has increased dramatically over the past two decades. It is now common for advertisers to incorporate schools into their overall marketing plans for products as diverse as soft drinks and automobiles. In addition to distracting children from academic learning, marketing activities often promote unhealthy behaviors that have a disproportionate impact on minority children. The heavy consumption of soft drinks, for example, is suspected of contributing significantly to the increase in childhood obesity, which is in turn associated with increased rates of diabetes. Although obesity and diabetes are problems across all groups, African Americans and Latinos are particularly at risk. Similarly, privatizing school reforms may harm minority children.
Commercialism-through advertising aimed at young people, the marketing of candy and soft drinks on school premises, the appropriation of school space for commercial marketing activities, the sponsorship of curricular materials, and the privatization of everything from cafeteria services to school management and classroom teaching by forprofit companies-has steadily grown in America's public schools. This growth has been documented over more than a dozen years by the Commercialism in Education Research Unit (CERU) at the Education Policy Research Laboratory at Arizona State University (Molnar, 2002).
The evidence suggests that commercialism in schools harms all students in various ways that include promoting poor health habits (e.g., consumption of sugar- and fatladen snacks and soft drinks), distorting the curriculum, and eroding critical thinking skills. When one considers both the forces that drive rising school commercialism and the potential outcomes, it appears likely, however, that ethnic minority group students, particularly African Americans and Latinos, are the most severely at risk. Schoolhouse commercialism is allowed to flourish in an environment in which public schools increasingly are starved for resources, and no schools are more in need of funding than those in urban communities where poor and ethnic minority group children are so heavily concentrated. Moreover, health problems in young people, which may be exacerbated by some commercial activities in schools, are particularly acute in poor and ethnic minority group communities.
A RISING TIDE OF SCHOOLHOUSE COMMERCIALISM
Commercialism in schools and classrooms is not new, but over the last two decades, corporations have dramatically increased their involvement in education. Today, almost every large corporation sponsors some type of in-school project. They...