Making sense of media: Class helps kids understand advertising
By Bev Wax/ Correspondent
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Original URL: http://www2.townonline.com/dover/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=490655


Students in the Chickering After-School
program in the ’Media Literacy’ class
worked on a project that asked them
to create a product and develop
marketing materials.
(Staff photo by Keith E. Jacobson)

DOVER - While many adults simply accept the fact that misleading advertising is becoming commonplace in our daily lives, children taking an after-school media literacy course at Chickering School in Dover are learning to question what corporations are saying and asking the consumer to buy.
      Some 25 students in grades three through five attending the extended day program at the Chickering signed up for a Media Literacy course offered by Community Education.
      Director Michele Doyle Sullivan said, "It’s important for kids to be critical thinkers of what they see in the media."
      She began researching curriculum materials after visiting Washington and learning from a principal that a Maryland school was offering such a course.
      About a year and a half ago, management from Master’s Touch Painting in Medfield approached Sullivan with an offer to support a class for the Dover-Sherborn community. The company donated money to Community Education every time a customer from either town went ahead with a painting estimate.
      Sullivan believes the funds allowed her organization an opportunity to initiate a new type of course. She personally researched the materials available for students and hired two Chickering elementary teachers, Jenny and Craig Robinette, to write a course tailored to young students for five 45-minute lessons. The materials include tapes and videos.
      The acting director of extended day, Chris Mailer, worked with teaching aide Robert Minshul to put together groups of students. Minshul said her help was invaluable since she knew the students’ personalities when it came time to develop teams. He said, "The course is all about how companies market products and services and what ways they urge you to use and buy their product ... from pure exaggeration to outright lying."
      Sullivan said it is often difficult for young children to go back to learning after a full day of school. Minshul described that during the first class, the children were quietly listening to many definitions and a lot of terms. He said by the next class, they began talking about specific products, slogans and commercials.
      "We brainstormed and came up with a whole chart. The kids quickly caught on how sometimes advertising aimed a children just isn’t good," he said.
      He said they were particularly disturbed over the Kelly doll, Barbie’s baby sister. They had listened to the commercial that went something like, "When Barbie’s not looking, take things and put them in the shopping cart." Minshul said, "They also saw how food at McDonald’s or Burger King doesn’t look anything like the real thing on TV."
      Minshul is proud they have developed an ability in such a short time to see "that certain ads are even insulting to kids." His students pointed out a Clorox ad they thought "put kids down. It almost brought them to the point of writing complaint letters to the company, but that’s a whole different area." They also now recognize how companies often use well-known athletes or cute little animals on packages to sell their products, and that there is a lot of fine print that is never read by a consumer.
      The children will have the opportunity to work together in teams next week to sell products they created and perform in commercials to pitch them to the "public," in this case parents, staff and school administrators. Minshul told students "to develop a product, write instructions and package the product. I also told them it’s OK to use some of the marketing strategies we learned such as ’are sold separately’..." Both Minshul and Sullivan believe the course has helped the students to work together, strategize, be creative, and have fun. Their commercials will include ones for a board game, a cuddly, stuffed animal and of course, a new sugary cereal.
      Minshul was pleased that after observing the last class, Sullivan said, "I think they’ve got it!" However, from teaching the course he is somewhat concerned. "What kind of messages are the students getting? How numb as a culture are we becoming by getting used to them?" Sullivan hopes to do her part in continuing to educate students by offering a follow-up course in media literacy with another expected donation from Master’s Painting later this year.