January 23rd, 2000
Oreos and M&M's? Learning Tools
By Judith Gaines
Boston Globe
These are some of the questions posed to students in an eighth-grade math class at Easton Junior High.
What’s the diameter of an Oreo cookie? How do you calculate the surface area of a box of Cocoa Frosted Flakes?
How many M&M candies in a 16-ounce bag are likely to be red?
The questions come from their controversial new textbook, "Mathematics: Applications and Connections," which uses brand names like Nike sneakers and Nintendo games, and junk foods like Cheez-Its, to make algebra and geometry exciting and relevant to young students.
With glossy photographs of products and corporate logos, and exercises that send students off to their favorite stores at the shopping mall, the McGraw-Hill text attempts to silence that age-old teenage lament about math: "When am I ever going to use this?"
But critics say it turns schools into mini-marketplaces, encouraging students to become more brand-conscious by asking questions such as: "Do you like Hershey’s Chocolate Kisses?"
"Corporate advertising is penetrating more and more in our society, but it should stop at the school doors," said Paul Dubois, a sports sociologist at Bridgewater State College, whose daughter is using the textbook at Easton Junior High. "We could find more creative ways to make math interesting and fun than by bombarding kids with product promotions."
The curriculum reflects the growing integration of commercial products, and sometimes advertising, into an arena once considered off limits: the public school classroom. Around the country, the textbook has touched off protests from parents and groups that monitor commercialism in education, and has been outlawed in California.
But the authors and teachers say opponents are out of touch with today’s students, who are streetwise consumers reared in an era of Pokemon toys and action figure tie-ins at Burger King, and need to process information in a language they know.
Besides, students say, the book is fun.
They learn symmetry by studying the design of Chevrolet and Hallmark logos. They learn to plot data by creating graphs charting Nike and Reebok sales.
"It’s like seeing a commercial while you’re learning," said Steve Girourd, 13, an Easton student, who thought this was "cool."
"It makes math more fun for us, because it relates to things we deal with in everyday life," said classmate Leah Joy Hanscom, 13.
The McGraw-Hill text, published last year with editions for students in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, is catching on in Massachusetts, where it is used by about 80 school districts, including Braintree, Lowell, Barnstable, Springfield, and Plymouth. The first edition was introduced in 1993.
It does not rely solely on brand names to bring math to life. Internet exercises, sports celebrities, and historical events also are used in examples and equations. And since corporations have not paid for their products to appear in the book, the authors assert that calling the placements advertising is inaccurate.
"We were responding to what educators across the country have been telling us they want in their classrooms: real-world examples that engage the students’ interest," McGraw-Hill spokesman Bill Jordan said. "If you can attract and retain their interest, they’ll learn better and remember longer."
Among arguably the most important critics, the book is a hit. When four math classes in Massachusetts schools were asked by a reporter last week whether they favored the inclusion of company brand names in their textbook, the students voted a resounding "Yes."
William Kendall, math director for Braintree’s schools, said because corporate slogans saturate adolescent life these days, they no longer stand out, even in schoolbooks. "It just blends in," Kendall said. "I guess we get so many advertising messages that we’ve become oblivious to them."
Said Easton Junior High math teacher Steven Cerce: "You can’t get real without mentioning specific products."
But what galls critics is not just what they see as commercial clutter on the pages. It is also the idolatrous descriptions of corporations and advertising icons.
One chapter about ratios reads: "The characters that appear in many television commercials are entertaining as well as effective. One example is the Pillsbury Dough Boy." Pictured alongside the text is a picture of the dough boy cheerily waving to readers.
"In a 1996 Louis Harris poll, about 38 out of 100 people . . . rated the Pillsbury Dough Boy commercials very effective," the text says, explaining that 38 out of 100 is a ratio.
Jordan, McGraw-Hill’s director of media relations, emphasized that the corporate references were not requested or paid for by the companies, although firms did give permission for their logos to be used.
But many of the corporate images feature fast food, cookies, candy, and other products that are not necessarily nutritious, noted Gary Ruskin, director of Commercial Alert in Washington, D.C.
"It’s absolutely inappropriate for a school district to be endorsing junk foods when we have skyrocketing rates of childhood obesity," he said.
Nicholas Rubino Jr., former director of mathematics for the Boston public schools, who was a consultant for an early version of the text, said the attacks on the McGraw-Hill text are predictable.
Rubino, however, said the fresh approach is desperately needed. Recent MCAS results showed Massachusetts students performing dismally in math, with 40 percent of eighth-graders failing the standardized test.
"We’ve been losing these kids, especially after the fourth or fifth grade," Rubino said. "This is something we’ve been trying to do for a long time: relate math to the world that really interests kids. I hope it’s a trend."
Students generally said they hoped so, too, although a few worried about the effects of the lessons.
"It’s product placement, like in the movies," observed Gabe Good, 14, in Cerce’s eighth-grade math class. "You see a movie star using something and you might want to go buy it."
Georgia Grattan, 14, also in Easton, pointed to a lesson that involved an elaborate computer play station.
"If you didn’t have enough money to buy some of these things, you might feel bad," she said.
Comments
- Posted by Tash Junior on August 30th, 2005
Next book on psychology and anatomy could get much more “fun” if it uses erotic and other enticing material on its pages. I bet that the high school “consumers” will be all for it.
Then, the best math skills one can use is for gambling, card counting, statistics, the possibilities are unbound.
Teachers who advocates all that corporate/brand brainwash are suppose to be disqualified.