“Channel One: Good or Bad News for Our Schools” (May 1993) illustrates some limitations of opinion surveys and statistical studies. Author-researcher Drew Tiene asked students and teachers if they liked Channel One, if it presented “information in an entertaining way,” and if their school should keep it. “Yes, yes, yes”—most of them replied—“I want my MTV!”
As an opponent of Channel One, I'll readily concede that its programs are entertaining and that many students and teachers want to keep it. While Tiene's attitudinal survey may be an accurate report of their feelings, I don't think the questions asked (or the answers received) warrant his enthusiastic conclusion that “subscribing to Channel One positions a school to exploit the `video revolution.' ” The questions are not very relevant to those who base their educational decisions on principles rather than popularity.
The problem with the surveys about Channel One is that they often ask the wrong questions—blurring issues, omitting relevant information, and neglecting ethical issues.
The Main Issue
All arguments about the 10 minutes of programming are side issues. These include (1) the various arguments about whether news and feature stories are biased (liberal or conservative) or superficial (a “dumbing down” emphasis on trivia, pop culture, and “Kid News”); (2) objections to method (some critics oppose the fast-paced, quick cuts, infotainment glitz as antithetical to the values of teaching disciplined thought); or (3) questions about learning effectiveness (“Are students learning current events?”—Tests show mixed results).
To focus on any of these issues works on Whittle's behalf, as a diversionary smokescreen. These less relevant issues blandly assume the validity of the commercial “package” accompanying the news. They don't deal with the real issue specific to Channel One: two minutes of ads.
Critics may generally agree that the main issue is “ads in the classroom” but bring up diversionaries about kind and degree: “The products are legal. . . . The ads aren't that bad . . . only two minutes a day.” Or they may point to another wrong: “What about ads in school newspapers or bulletin boards or “Free Films for Educators,” which promote the corporate policies of their sponsors?” Further, critics may suggest that opponents of Channel One are zealots or that any criticism of the program is an attack on the Free Enterprise System.
Whittle emphasizes the need for students to know current events, his rationale for offering his services. But this ploy is a non-issue. Everyone agrees with this general goal; we differ as to the specific means, such as the ad-free news from CNN used in more than 10,000 schools, or VCR taping, and so on. Whittle stresses that he'll present no commercials for alcohol, birth control, abortion clinics, and “head shops”—only “good” ads that are not likely to provoke parental criticism. (Whittle's not going to kill his cash cow.) Indeed, most of the ads are likely to have been seen before at home on TV: candy and cola, cereals, cosmetics and clothes.
The main issue is the presence of television advertising—of commercial persuasion—actively targeted at the audience of children within the classroom and sanctioned by the schools.
Commercial television is the appropriate venue for such persuasion. In our society, commercial television is the main “marketplace,” where (as the courts have often ruled) people expect puffery and “sellers' talk” that intensify the “good” about a product and downplay the “bad.” In a society that values free speech and free enterprise and that accommodates diverse political and commercial persuaders, we must expect to live in a verbal environment of many persuaders in competition.
The schools, however, are the appropriate venue for neutrality and objectivity, the place to teach the young how to analyze and understand the techniques and patterns of persuasion common to all persuaders.
Instead, however, Whittle has blurred the distinction between the marketplace and the schools. He has suborned the schools to function as a go-between, gathering the children into a valuable “target audience” (currently 8 million children in more than 12,000 schools), which Whittle sells to his clients. Channel One offers its advertisers access to the “youth market” during a valuable “day part” (8 a.m. to 3 p.m.) that is clutter-free from competing ads.
In Whittle's scheme, the role of the schools and teachers is to “deliver the audience.” Once the kids are in front of the TV sets, then it's the job of Channel One's programmers to keep the kids watching (and teachers happy) with 10 minutes of news and lively infotainment features. They will do their job well, and so will the ads. The ads promise benefits that this target audience already wants: colas, clothes, and cosmetics—often associated with desirable images of popularity, success, and fun.
Teachers may claim that most kids “don't pay attention” to the ads. But this attitude simply reveals naiveté or ignorance of the techniques of indirect, nonrational persuasion—such as “peripheral attention,” repetition, and the “association” technique.
In addition to compromising the neutrality and objectivity of the schools, Channel One also weakens the moral authority to deal with health and safety issues, such as diet and nutrition. For example, a recent Pepsi commercial featured a beautiful, vivacious model (Cindy Crawford) in a clever ad campaign, designed to elicit cheerful remarks from the audience. Any classroom teacher with a follow-up commentary about omissions and disadvantages—potential health problems (sugared drinks, caffeine cola addiction), emotional problems (manipulation of beauty images), or financial problems (expensive clothes)—is apt to be seen as a scold or a prude.
Ads are intrinsically one-sided, not required (except in a few situations) to disclose any disadvantages. Schools, however, should be evenhanded and disinterested, teaching the young decision maker how to make an informed choice by weighing the benefits and disadvantages.
Supporters of the program claim that teachers could use Channel One to analyze ads. Perhaps somewhere, teachers do have the time, talent, and training to do this. But, probably the more typical situation was reported by Drew Tiene, who observed the limited time available in homeroom for any discussion. In the schools I visited, the program concluded just as homeroom ended, and students immediately streamed into the hallways.
The issue, more precisely, as I've argued in The Pitch, is not the presence of ads in the classroom, but the purpose, why they are there, and the procedures, how they are handled. If students are expected to be passive receivers of these persuasive messages, either in terms of buying the products or of “feeling good” about them, then there should be no ads: certainly, no Channel One.
However, ads should be studied as part of a language arts program or a critical thinking program: analyzed as units of persuasion, treated seriously as examples of carefully crafted nonrational persuasion. The 30 seconds of “real time,” as viewed by the audience, is the end-product of a complex and costly process in which scores of people (writers, psychologists, actors, artists, camera crews) may have spent months putting together the details. TV ads are often the best compositions of our era—the most skillful synthesis of purposeful words and images, in which every word, every camera angle, every gesture is carefully planned. Such an ad may have 40–50 quick-cut scenes, associating the product with “good times.” An audience perceives these images simultaneously, but must discuss them sequentially, one at a time.
Thus, analysis takes time! Ideally, such viewing and analysis of ads should be planned and controlled by the teacher (not the advertisers), using magazine ads or videotaped TV commercials. Preferably, this should be done by a trained teacher, in a coherent program, with the goal of teaching the greatest number of young citizens how to analyze persuasion from any source.
Instead, however, schools nationwide are eagerly running after Whittle's money. Perhaps the real shame is not so much that they are selling their kids as audiences to the few persuaders, but that the schools are neglecting to teach children how to cope with persuasion.
Ad Radio Enters the Schools
Star Broadcasting, a satellite network, introduced its 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. radio programming into 1,000 schools last September. Every hour offers 50 minutes of rock `n' roll, 8 minutes of ads, and 2 minutes for schools to use as they wish. Star is scheduling its “prime time” ad rates at the lunch hour. Later this fall, some 2,700 grade schools will introduce KidsNews, a multimedia program (including videos and posters) that will advertise toys, candies, and cereals.
Source: J. Jensen, (July 26, 1993), “Ad-Supported Radio Rolls into Nation's High Schools,” Advertising Age, p. 22.
Hidden Assumptions
Why did so many well-meaning educators sign up so quickly for Channel One? Partly, Whittle was a skillful salesman: he came gifts in hand, not only offering thousands of dollars worth of “free” hardware and packaged programming, but also providing the mental rationalizations (the “good intentions”) needed by the teachers to justify their actions: altruism (“doing it for the benefit of the children”) and pragmatism (“reasonable trade-offs”). Further, he flattered his audiences, praising their sophistication (“Teachers know best,” “Kids today know all about TV ads”).
Whittle's blitz was well funded, well organized (one centralized national thrust, dealing with thousands of individual school boards), and met with little organized opposition: legal challenges in a few states, some resolutions from teachers' groups and unions, and some individual protests. But there was no nationwide outcry against Channel One. Why not?
Elsewhere I've argued that Whittle took advantage of three very common, very widespread—and very wrong—unstated premises and unspoken assumptions in our culture: namely, that ads are not significant, not effective, and not harmful. Basically, most people see ads as bothersome but trivial, unworthy of serious consideration. We get irked when they intrude on our time or space, but we brush them away like pesky mosquitoes. They're “just” ads. If our society had seriously considered them as “units of persuasion,” we might not have tolerated them on children's television programs or in our schools.
Further, most people think that ads don't work. Every year, in surveys by advertising research firms, most adults (75–80 percent) respond that “advertising doesn't affect me.” In schools, students wearing designer jeans and $150 gym shoes are blandly unaware that ads affect them. One reason for such attitudes is that few people (and few teachers) have been adequately trained in persuasion analysis. Thus, many people erroneously limit the concept of persuasion to explicit rational arguments, as if an audience were to obey commands robotlike.
In reality, most of the persuasion we encounter everyday is implicit, using nonrational techniques (emotional appeals, association techniques, “image building”) and long-term, low-key conditioning. Listen to people when they talk about “stupid” ads, unaware that some ads are not targeted at their demographic group, or unaware that some corporate “feel good” ads are not selling products, but policies.
In colleges and teacher training programs in the past generation, nobody cared much about persuasion analysis. College English teachers were too busy with literature. Speech teachers were Balkanized (debate, drama, speech therapy, media studies). Although some did teach persuasion, most were saddled with the freshman course centering on the three-minute speech. Generally speaking, the study of persuasion analysis fell between the cracks in the college curriculum and in teacher training—during the very era of great growth and increasing sophistication of the professional persuaders: politicians and advertisers.
Whittle was the first major intruder into the schools to take advantage of this vacuum; he will not be the last. Even if he were to withdraw Channel One from every school overnight, he has demonstrated to other commercial persuaders that there's a vast gathered audience of children in the classroom, with very little protection.
Ethical Issues
Ethically, it is wrong to exploit children. Teachers may agree in general but sometimes exempt themselves because of their “good intentions.” But as the debate continues, more ethical questions are being raised.
Avoidance of these questions may be the basic strategy of those who advocate Channel One. Once educators grant the premise that their function in Whittle's scheme is to deliver children as audiences to persuaders (or that ads are “units of persuasion,” “effective,” and so on), then they are in an uncomfortable position, embarrassed that others would view them as being seduced or bribed by Whittle. Not only have they made a wrong decision in a long-term contract, but others are challenging their intelligence and integrity. It's no wonder that some educators are going to get very huffy and defensive (“We've already settled that issue!”). Perhaps “cognitive dissonance” might describe this dilemma of educators who thought they were doing the right thing and then were criticized as exploiting the children. Both positions can't be held at once, so avoidance of this ethical argument is their first defense.
Denial is the second strategy. The compromise position reached by many teachers is that of the “reasonable trade-off” (unintended side effects). But this argument will not hold up to close scrutiny if one considers the teachers' lack of time and training, the sophistication of the persuasion techniques, and the imbalance of the situation.
In practice, ethical issues are often blurred by hidden agendas. There are some “dirty little secrets” seldom mentioned in the public arguments over Channel One: some teachers like the program because it's entertaining (“I want my MTV!”) or an opportunity for them to catch up with other chores while students are pleasantly occupied. Some administrators and school boards like the program because it's “easy money”—funding they don't have to seek from an increasingly grudging taxpayer. Whittle could easily distance himself from such abuses of his program, but they do represent real ethical problems.
Channel One will continue to be divisive as long as it is in the schools. “Good intentions” are not enough. Initially, teachers (or school boards) could plead that they didn't realize the implications. But future arguments over adoptions and renewals should focus on these ethical questions, not on popularity, not on programming. The first question must be self-reflexive: Is it ethical for educators to deny the ethical issues raised?
