And the schools in which those kids spend more than 20 percent of their time represent an important economic marketplace for those businesses. Commercial ads now appear on school buses and in school hallways. They decorate gyms, school cafeterias, lockers, and book covers. Team uniforms, billboards, and scoreboards sport corporate logos and company slogans. Corporate dollars provide technology many schools could not otherwise afford.
Businesses provide grants, scholarships, and incentives that improve the future of many students.
Groups such as the National Parent Teacher Association and the National Education Association have therefore called for the establishment of guidelines that can allow schools to benefit from corporate dollars while maintaining educational integrity. In and out of school, kids are constantly bombarded by media messages and commercial influences. Effective educational programs in media literacy and money management can help them deal with those messages in intelligent and discriminating ways. Those programs should begin in elementary school and continue throughout the educational process. The following Web sites provide information and resources for teaching kids how to evaluate the commercial messages they're exposed to and how to make responsible and thoughtful decisions about spending and saving their money.