advertising and ideological content in free … buttolph pp 34-37.pdfadvertising and ideological...
TRANSCRIPT
ADVERTISING AND IDEOLOGICAL CONTENT IN FREE CONSUMER CURRICULUM MATERIALS
Joel Rudd 1 Arizona State University
Vicki L. Buttol ph New Hampshire League of Conservation Voters
~~~~~~~~~-'ABSTRACT~~~~~~~~~~Consumer educators in public school s have ready access to free curriculum materials f rom a variety of sources such as corporations, trade associations, governments, and non-profit organizations. Earlier accounts (e. g ., 12) claim that ma t erials from business sources contain large numbers of advertising claims and pro-business ideological statements. The research reported in this paper seeks to evaluate the extent to which this claim is true. For the first time, a systematic content analysis was conducted on materials from business (corporate and trade association) and non-business (government and non-profit) sources to identify advertising and ideological biases. Findings indicated that, while advertising content was substantial in materials from all sources, businesssponsored consumer curriculum materials contained significantly more advertising claims than did nonbusiness materials. The number of ideological s t atements did not vary across material sources. Implications for curriculum policy makers, classroom teachers, and consumer educators are discussed.
The business community provides an increasing share of consumer curriculum materials for use in public schools. These materials have great appeal to financially strapped public schools: they are (usually) free; they are of high technical quality; and, in the main, both teachers and stud ents appear to respond positively to them.
On the other hand, serious questions have been raised about the appropriateness of business-sponsored materials. A ground breaking reviE.w of business-sponsored consumer curriculum materials d escribes them as "propaganda" (12). As such, these materials are viewed as promoting the business cause through the use of blatant advertisjng messages. Further, they glorify free enterprise by promoting a productive, efficient work for ce (4, 12) .
The business community has responded to these criticisms in a number of ways. Some have argued that most or all business-sponsored materials are not biased and that biased materials can be easily "weeded out " by classroom teachers (2,9,11). Proponents of business-sponsored materials also def end their use by pointing to the tremendous school system need for such materials and to the public relations value of such ma terials for its sponsors (2,11), In addition, defenders counter critics' "pr opaganda" accusations by a ttacking the motives
1 Assistant Professor, Family Studies
34
and credibility of those critics (3,18). Others admit that the materials are biased, but insist that the business point-of-view is a legitimate one for consumer curriculum materials (1,10). Finally, some argue that the problem of bias is minute compared to the advantages in resources, technology and expertise of the busin ess community (9,16) .
Are some, most, or all business-sponsored consumer curriculum materials in fact promoting the products and/or ideologies of their producers r a ther than providing unbiased (or at l east balanced) consumer educa tion for students? Do businesssponsored materials indeed contain more advertising and ideological content (both verbal and pictorial) than do consumer curricu l um materials sponsored by non-business organizations? We do not have an answer to these questions. Critics of business-sponsored mater ials, who would respond to these questions witn a resounding "Yes", have thus far relied entirely on un systematic reviews of such materials, including descriptive accounts of particularly objectionable exampl es (e.g., 12). The extent to which business-sponsored materials are or are not "propaganda " has not beem empirically studied.
It is the purpose of the present paper to report results of the first systematic content analysis of free con sumer curriculum materials . This use of a content anal ysis methodology is an attempt to "let the materials speak for themselves. " Free consumer curriculum materials were solicited from both business (corporate and trade association) and non-business (government and non-prof it organizations) sponsors. The sample of materials received was analyzed for its advertising and ideological content,
HYPOTHESES
If, as the critics claim, business-sponsored consumer curriculum materials are part of a major propaganda salvo aimed at creating brand loyal consumers-of - the-future, then the following hypothesis should be supported. Hypothesis 1 : Business-sponsored consumer curriculum materia ls will contain more advertising c l aims than will non-business materials.
Critics have also claimed that many free consumer curriculum materials attempt to indoctrinate young students thorough one-sided presentations of t he free enterprise system and their future place in it. In this regard, cr itics note, materials sponsored by government agencies as well as the business community are suspect (11,15). Thus hypothe-
sis 2 states: Corporate, trade association , and government agency free consumer curriculum materials will contain more free enterprise statanents than wil l materials from non-profit organization s .
METilODOLOGY
A sampl e of free educational materials wa s selected from the Elanentary Teacher's Guide to Free Curriculum Material s (17) . This guide was obtained from a local elementary school and is one of ten volumes currently availabl e to school systems (8) . Its use as a sampling uni verse produc es a manageable sample size (13) in that only print materials ar e listed (17). The sample was sel ected within the same consumer rel evant areas highlighted in (12): nutr ition, energy, and economic s education. Wit hin these subheadings ever y fifth item was requested by mail from the respective sponsor. Reques t letters dated January 20, 1984, were sent on a New England elementary school letterhead over the signature of a local teacher.2
Operational Definitions
Material sources were categorized as either corporations, trade associations, government agencies , or non-profit organizat ions. Corporate-sponsored mater ial s are t hose f rom f or-profit organizations whose primary goal is to marke t specific merchandise and/or services for financial gain. Trade assoc iation materials are those f r om a ny assoc iation of merchants or businesses united to promot e their common int erests . Government-sponsor ed materials a r e t hose from any fed eral, s tate, or local government agency . Non-profit organizat ion material s are those from groups not designed t o promote merchandis e a nd/or s ervices for f inancial gains .
Advertis ing claims were defined a s any statements promot i ng a product, brand , model, corporation, trade association, government agency or non- profit organ izat ion. Free enterprise statements were defined as any statement s promoting f r ee ent erpr ise capitalism as an economic system.
Two coders were trained to do the cont ent anal ysis on the sample material. (Training was done using materials other t han t hose acquired for t he s tudy.) One coder analyzed the entire sampl e of material s; the second coder analyzed a randomly-selected subset of the materials (a pproximately 15 percent of t he total sampl e). Inter-coder agreement on t he mutually-coded 15 percent of t he sample (88.5%) was consid er ed suff icient l y high to preclude having both coders analyze the entire sampl e.
RESULTS
Of the 142 educational material items requested from 103 material sponsors, 11 6 useable items were
2 A sample request letter a nd a complete l i st of requ ested free material titles and sponsor s are available from the fir s t author upon request.
35
received from 86 sponsors for an 81 .7 percent response rate (items) and an 83.S percent response rate ( sponsors). Any materials received that were not consistent with the titles requested were rejected.
Hypothesis 1 predicts that bus iness-sponsored (corporate and trade association) materials will contain more advertising c l a ims than will materials from non-bus iness (government and non-prof it organizations) sources. The results shown i n Table 1 indicate the mean number o f adverti s ing claims across these two materials sour ces. As predicted, business- sponsored materials contain s i gnificantly more advert ising claims than do non-business materials.
TABLE 1 . Mean Number of Advertising Claims Per Item Acro ss Material Sources
Material Source
Business ( Corporate, Trade Association)
Non-Business (Government, Non-Prof it Organization)
t ( one-tailed)
p
Mean Number of Advertising Cl aims Per Item n
20 .31
10.89
2. 17
.OS
71
45
Hypothesis 2 predicts that cor porate, trade association, and gov ernmen t agency material s will contain more free enterprise statements than will mat erial s from non- profit organizations. The r esul t s s hown in Table 2 indicate the mean number of free enter pr ise statements across these two material sources. Corporate, trade association, and government materia l s do not conta in sign ificantly more free enterprise s t a t ements than do mater ials from non-profit organi zations.
DISCUSSION
It is apparent from thi s study t hat the critics of bus iness- sponsored free curriculum material s are correct when they claim that the material s cont ain large amounts of advertising. Tne business-sponsored materials in our sample contained almos t twice as ma ny advertising messages a s tne non business material s . In f act, business-sponsored material s contained an average of 20 advertising statements per item. It should be noted that these figures do not reflect the presence of additional "advertisi ng r e lated" pi ctor i al a nd verbal s tatements, e . g. company name, logos , brand names,
pictures of brands, etc. In this context, the amount of advertising found in these materials is truly astounding. While these figures should be of concern to consumer educators, perhaps of even more concern should be the findings that non-business-sponsored materials in our sample contained an average of nearly 11 advertising messages per item. It appears that promotional statements are hardly absent from even non-business-sponsored materials.
Free enterprise statements, on the other hand, appear to be much rarer in free curriculum materials. Further, there were no significant differences in numbers of free enterprise statements across material sources . The rel ative paucity of free enterprise s tatements may be partly due to a perception on the part of the business community that the "attack" on free enterprise economics has subsided since its peak in the late 1960's/early 1970's and the belief that since the 1980 election the free enterprise ideology is once again transcedent.
The results of this study carry important implications for curriculum policy makers, for teachers, and for consumer educators in academia. The fragmented and confused state of curriculum policy making (14) has apparently b een exploited by the business community through its successful infilt r ation of the curricul um process (19). Oirriculum policy makers can no longer ignor e the commer cialization of t heir curricula t hrough use of bu siness-sponsored materials. It i s clear that these ma t erial s are largely vehic l es for advertising and are no t primarily intended t o serve an educational function ,3
TABLE 2. Mean Number of Free Ent er prise Statements Per Item Across Material Sources
Corpor ate, Trade Association, Government
Material Non-Prof it Source Association
t (on e-tailed)
p
Mean Number of Fr ee Enterprise Statements Per Item n
6.37 90
2.46 26
1. 53
n. s .
Classroom teachers, influential agents in the education process, mu s t decipher curriculum policy and administer it to student s. Ambiguous or nonexistent policies regarding use of business-sponsored material s l eave individual teachers with the primary gatek eeping r esponsibility (S). As s uch they must accept or r ejec t undefined curr icu-
36
lum pol icy mandates and materials. Becau se teachers are untrained and inconsistent gatekeepers (at least when it comes to dealing with business-sponsored curriculum materials), business sponsors have a good chance that many of their materials will be used in the classroom.
The findings of this study provide two major challenges for consumer educators. First , consumer educator s should see to it that the results of this study are given the widest possible distribution. Classroom teachers, as well as educational and consumer policy makers, should be made aware of the nature of business-sponsored curriculum materials.
Along these lines, efforts s hould b e made to develop and disseminate to classroom teachers and educational policy makers improved set of guidelines for eval~ating fr ee consumer curriculum materials. Currently-available guidelines ( e.g. 6, 7) contain evaluative criteria which are vague and provide little real guidance for classroom teachers. For example, one set of guidelines contains the following criterion questions: "Is the material free of bias, deception or exaggeration?" (6) . Teachers are to assign a "yes", or " somewhat " response to this item. Nowhere is bias, deception, or exaggeration d efined and no help is provided to the teacher in pinpointing actual instances of bias, deception , or exaggeration. Certainly no help is provid ed in assessing acceptable degrees and direction of bias. Th e r esults of the present study s upport the contention that, because they contain large amounts of advertising , virtually a ll busin ess-sponsor ed materia l is b iased a nd deceptive. Further, current guid elines do not contain any expl icit reference to advertising content in curriculum materials. As the pr esent s tudy indicates, advertising messages pervade these materials. Classroom teac her s should have available to them guidelines which help them identify specific instances of advertising . A second implication of this stud y for consumer educators concerns the need for more research on the natur e of consumer curriculum materials. As was indicated earlier, the present study concerned itself only with the presence of advertising a nd ideologica l c l aims in materia l s . Further r esearch covering the ent ire real m of "commercial content " in free con sum er material s is needed . Suc h research could examine use of company a nd brand names, logos , i llu s trations, etc.
3 An interesting comment ary on the commer ical in
tent behind business-sponsored materials was provided in a l etter r eceived by the researc hers from t he California and Hawaiian ("C & H") Sugar Co. in response to our reques t for copies of two of their free educational materials . The letter from C & H, informing t he researchers that their request had not been filled, stated that " ... distribution of these materials has been l imited to the areas where our C and H brand is normally sold . . . " (not the East Coast).
In fact, research analyzing material s content should be an ongoing process. Because these free material s are unregulated, they can be changed a t any time. If changes in materials are to be accurately t racked, samples s hould be analyzed periodically . T-he results of such analyses could be used to expand and update the guidelines for eval uating free consumer curriculum materials.
Of final importance is the finding in the present stud y that even non-business-sponsored materials contain substantial amounts of advertising . Future researcli sliould include a nalyses of school textbook content and perhaps a comparison of such content with that of non-bu siness-sponsored free materials.
REFER!.:NCES
1 . Blumenthal, Ralph (1980), "Big Business as School Master, " New York Times, January 23, c 1, 12.
2. Business Week (1980), "Industry's Schoolhou se Clout , " October 13 , 156, 160.
3. Capehart , Bertis E. ( 1980), "Our Bias i s Snowing?" Phi Delta Kappan 61: (Ma y ) , 660.
4. Dlabay, Les R. (1981), "Teacners: Use Materials With Caution," Concerns 3 (July/Augus t), 3-4.
5 . Donohoe, George A., Phillip J . Tichenor, and Cl airce N. Olien, "Gatekeeping : Mass Media Systems a nd I n formation Control," in Current Perspectives in Mass Communica tion Research, eds. F. Gerald Kline and Phillip J. Tichenor, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications , 1972 .
6. "Educator' s Guide fo r Using Business Sponsored Resources in Consumer Education Classrooms" (1978) Michigan Consumer Educat ion Center, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI.
7. "Guidelines for Business Sponsored Education Materials" (1982), Society of Consumer Affairs Professional s in Busines s, Al exandria , VA.
8, Gussow, Joan D. (1980), ' 'Who Pays the Piper ?" Teachers College Record 81 (Summer), 448-466.
9 . Haney , Peggy H. (1981), "Teachers : Don't Overlook Business," Concerns 3 (July/ August), 3.
10. Harty, Sheila (1981), "Big Business in the Classroom," Business a nd Society Review 38 (Summer), 36-39.
11. Harty, Sheila (1981), "Hucksters i n the Classroom," Social Policy, 12 (September I October) 38-42.
12.
13 .
14.
15.
16 .
17 .
18.
19.
37
Harty , Sheila (1979), Hucksters in the Cla ssroom: A Review of Industry Propoganda i n Sc hools , Wa shington, D.C.: Center for Study of Responsive Law.
Kassarj ian, Harold H . (1977), "Content Analysis i n Consumer Research," Journal of Consumer Research 4 (June), 8-18.
Kirst, Michael W. and Decker F. Walker ( 1971), "An Analysis of Curriculum PolicyMaking, " Review of Educational Research, 41 (Decemb er) , 479-509.
Medsger, Betty (1976), "The ' Free' Propaganda That Floods the Schools," The Progressi ve 40 (December) 42-46 .
Na t ional Public Radio, Option s i n Education (1981) "Business in the School s, " Washington, D.C . , transcript, 44 pp .
Nehmer, Kathleen Suttles and Rober t D. Krey, eds. (1983), Elementary Teacher's Guide to Free Curriculum Materi als, Randolph, WI: Educators Progress Services, Inc.
Seligman, Daniel (1981), "The Further Adventures of Honesty and Clarity, " Fortune (March 9), 41.
Spring , Joel H. (1972), Education and the Rise of the Corporate State, Boston: Beacon Press.