Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Stealth merchandising
Why is the venerable Scholastic book club company peddling cheesy toys in classrooms?
By Shoshana Marchand
[02/29/00]

Babes in Willy Loman-land
Why does my kid have to sell stuff door-to-door for her school?
By Bob Whitby
[02/29/00]

What kind of mother are you?
Marketing mavens dissect moms for eager advertisers.
By Lisa Moskowitz
[02/28/00]

Shrinks and con men
An unholy alliance of psychologists and advertisers targets kiddie consumers.
By Arthur Allen
[02/28/00]

The series: An introduction
We ponder the family as a marketing bonanza.
By Jennifer Foote Sweeney
[02/28/00]

Complete archives for Mothers Who Think

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

The school where I worked is just over the hill from the University of California at Berkeley. By fifth grade, my students already knew not only the words to the Berkeley fight song but also where Berkeley fit in on their lists of preferred universities -- below Harvard, below Brown, below M.I.T., but definitely above any public state college. On Career Day, when my students were asked to invite someone who worked in a field that interested them, they brought in the president of Bechtel, a neurosurgeon and an astrophysicist, among others.

Also Today The family for sale We take a week to examine the ravenous commercial forces that prey on us each day.   Babes in Willie Loman-land Why does my kid have to sell stuff door-to-door for her school? By Bob Whitby   Stealth merchandising Why is the venerable Scholastic book club company peddling cheesy toys in classrooms? By Shoshana Marchand

The students in this community are aiming high and their parents are right behind them, propelling them in any way they are able. For franchised tutoring programs like Kumon, Sylvan Learning Center and Score! and supplemental programs like Hooked on Phonics and Lindamood-Bell, this mix of wealth and ambition represents a gold mine. The parents in communities like this are ready -- even anxious -- to pay top dollar to make sure their child has an edge in competition that is furtive, furious and fueled by the purveyors of academic weapons designed especially for the battle.

Hooked on Phonics is currently running flashing banner advertisements on women.com that command: "Get your kid an unfair advantage. Teach him to read early." A click-through takes you to the Hooked on Phonics site, which promises "simple systems" to help your child improve in both reading and math. "There is nothing more anxiety producing to parents than thinking their child is falling behind in school and not knowing what to do about it," intones the copy, which incites parental terror and then makes big money off of it.

While programs like Hooked on Phonics and Kumon Math and Reading centers claim improved skills for your child at school, they also slyly suggest their programs will offer your child a chance at a better life. The Kumon program helps students "master the skills necessary to succeed in an increasingly competitive world." Hooked on Phonics assures the reader that "a whole lot of people in the new economy owe their success to superior math skills" and offers, "Here are some rich and famous people who have a math/engineering background: Bill Gates -- Chairman of Microsoft Corporation, John Glenn -- Astronaut and Senator, and Andy Grove -- Chairman of Intel Corporation."

Read between the lines, folks. Your child could someday make billions like Bill Gates or travel into outer space like John Glenn, but he's got to be quick with his times tables in grammar school. What parent wouldn't want to see their child succeed on the level of these "rich and famous" men? (Curiously, there were no rich and famous women mentioned.)

In order to survive, supplemental tutoring programs must undermine a teacher's authority and expertise. They must convince parents that their children either aren't being taught with the appropriate techniques or that their children aren't being challenged. Otherwise, the after-school desks at these centers will be empty and the money will stop rolling in.

In upscale communities like the one in which I taught, the most convincing sales pitch revolves around the idea that a gifted child's needs aren't being met in the classroom. This is a hit with educated parents and their kids, for whom the suggestion of mediocrity is unfathomable. For these parents, the Score Web site explains, "Excellent students like your child often suffer from our school systems' inability to offer appropriately challenging course work for those who need it."

These kinds of statements are an insult to dedicated teachers. It was rare that I felt that a student in my classroom wasn't being challenged academically. In fact, I made it a top priority to meet the needs of every child in my classroom and instituted a computerized independent math program out of Stanford University for a child in my class who was phenomenally gifted. Still I heard in parent conferences, "My child is bored!" Most often, these were parents of children enrolled in outside tutorial programs.

Next page | An ironic complaint: Too much homework