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

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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.

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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.

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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.