Great education scandal: around 375 million children still out of school… who is selling the world's children down the river?

New Internationalist, August, 1999 by Chris Brazier

The Coca-Cola classroom

In the US, privatization via voucher schemes may be the long-term goal of the Right's siege of public education. But there is a Trojan Horse at work here too in the shape of the rampant commercialization of ordinary schools. Edison's Chris Whittle himself came to fame through his pioneering of television advertising in the classroom. His commercials for Snickers, Burger King and other companies are still seen by millions of schoolchildren in the US. In return for a satellite dish and TV sets for each classroom, schools guarantee that 90 per cent of students will watch a 12-minute ad-infested programme every day.

The latest trend is for school districts to conclude exclusive deals with Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola, taking money upfront for marketing the firm's products to children. Up to 1994 such deals were generally only with universities, but that year the first contract was signed with a public school district - with Shaler Area in Pennsylvania. Gradually the idea caught on and the arrangements became more elaborate until in 1998 the number of deals took off into the stratosphere (see box, The Coke Dude).

School districts, of course, claim they are simply gaining extra income for an underfunded education system. But quite apart from the health implications of promoting such nutritionally worthless drinks (young Americans already drink twice as much soda as milk), the deals often have significant implications for the curriculum. In March 1998, for example, Greenbriar High School in Georgia created an entire day's curriculum around Coke: chemistry classes measured the sugar content of a can; social-studies teachers lectured on Coke's markets overseas.

But even in the middle of this depressing saga, there was a glimmer of hope. At the end of the day all the school's students were dressed in red-and-white Coke T-shirts for a school photo - except that one dissident, Mike Cameron, suddenly pulled off his top to reveal a Pepsi work shirt (he was suspended for his impudence). Shame he opted to plug a rival corporation rather than debunk the whole shameful process, but resistance, it seems, is always possible.

More substantial resistance came from the 126,000 teachers and education workers in Ontario in the fall of 1997, who staged a two-week strike - the biggest political protest in North American history. The strike was a response to the full-scale onslaught of the radical right-wing Harris Government, elected in June 1995 on its promise of a `Common Sense Revolution'.

Ultimately the teachers were defeated - and the right-wing blitzkrieg on education has continued apace ever since, implementing many of the most retrograde reforms highlighted in this magazine. Thousands of teachers have left the profession. `Those of us who remain,' says Toronto teacher Thom Corner, `continue to be overworked and underappreciated. Constantly vilified by the Government, we have retreated into an angry shell from which we view the Common Sense Revolution's steady progress towards a market model.' (6) To rub salt in the wound, the Harris Government was re-elected in June thanks to a split in the opposition vote.