San Francisco Schools Boycott Oreo Cookies

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 9, 1999 | by Thomas D. Elias

Snacks made by subsidiaries of tobacco companies are out, as far as the San Francisco Board of Education is concerned. So are brand names in textbooks or on athletic uniforms.

The San Francisco Board of Education has made history: It's the first such body to ban on-campus sales of products made by tobacco companies and their subsidiaries. The board also voted to excise brand names from textbooks and mandated that no student be required to wear a corporate logo for any school activity, including sports.

The ban on tobacco companies and all their products does not prevent students from carrying Oreos onto campus in bag lunches. But it does mean school cafeterias and vending machines in the 60,000-student district will buy no more Oreo, SnackWell or Nutter Butter cookies, all owned by R.J. Reynolds -- best known for Manufacturing Camel cigarettes. There will be no more Cheez Whiz or Jell-O puddings, both made by Philip Morris, progenitor of the Marlboro Man.

"We want to stop having teens subsidize tobacco-corporation efforts to sell their cigarettes to kids," says Lillion Doctor of the Mission Housing Development Corp., which coordinates a youth project whose members identified tobacco-owned foods sold in San Francisco schools.

Targeting nontobacco products of big tobacco companies is the latest tactic in the antismoking campaign, says Kathryn Mulvey of InFact, a national group working to ban cigarettes from public places. "Teens are a critical constituency for our boycott," she says. "Tobacco companies target them for cigarettes, and teens need to target them to show they can't be pushed around. We are looking at San Francisco as a precedent-setter."

But it remains unclear whether San Francisco can enforce its Commercial Free Schools Act, which outlaws brand names in textbooks. Many state-mandated texts contain product names in stories and math problems. The Mathematics Applications and Connections, a sixth-grade text, uses Walt Disney Co.-inspired themes, for example. There are pictures of Sleeping Beauty's castle, as rendered in Disneyland, and scenes from Walt Disney World. The same book has problems featuring M&Ms, Nike shoes, Topps baseball cards, Raisinets and other brands. Indeed, a state study found 3,219 Commercial images and references in the math texts approved for use in California elementary and high schools.

San Francisco soon may get help from state government. Democratic Assemblywoman Kerry Mazzoni is pushing a bill to ban commercial images in all California texts. "Children should not be subjected to unnecessary advertising," she says. "They're a captive audience. There are ways to make education relevant without product promotion."

Meanwhile, some students say they'll keep smoking and eating Oreos no matter what the school board says. "It won't stop me from eating anything," says Joseph Ramirez, 16, a sophomore at McAteer High, who says he smokes Winstons. "What I eat and whether I smoke is my business. Not some politician's."

RELATED ARTICLE: Ban on Bilingual Classes Earns A Grades

The controversial California law banning most existing forms of bilingual education for the state's 1.4 million immigrant children has quietly and quickly won wide acceptance. In many school districts around the state, teachers who formerly swore by bilingual-education methods and abhorred the idea of discarding them now report their students are learning English faster in English-only classes than anyone expected.

Moreover, adult English classes funded by $50 million per year provided by a little-known provision of Proposition 227 have become extremely popular with parents. And far more immigrant parents than expected are choosing to keep their children in English-only classes rather than exploit a loophole in the law that would let them keep their youngsters in bilingual classes.

Still, some districts insist on skirting the new law. San Francisco, for one, never disbanded the bilingual classes in which immigrant students are taught primarily in their native languages. That city's school board dared the state or individual parents to sue for noncompliance. None has.

Bilingual education still is going strong in the 56,000-student Santa Aha school district as well. The district is considering whether to designate 12 of its campuses as language-alternative schools, a move that would exempt them from Proposition 227's general requirement that classes be conducted "overwhelmingly" in English.

But anecdotal information outweighs such opposition to Proposition 227. Teachers who formerly taught bilingual classes and resisted change report children learning to read English quickly.

"I was afraid the non-English-speaking children wouldn't understand," says Eliana Escobar, a first-grade teacher in the Orange County city of Dana Point. "But they're little sponges. They just absorb everything." In the small city of Rubidoux, east of Los Angeles, parent Maria Castillo is delighted that she, herself, is learning English 12 years after becoming a U.S. citizen -- gladly studying along with 60 other parents at West Riverside School.