February 2nd, 2004
Reading, Writing, Retailing: Field Trips Flock to Stores
By Bonnie Miller
Chicago Tribune
About 30 6-year-olds gather around their classmate, who is decked out in $199 Rollerblades, the 1st-grade equivalent of a Porsche 911.
The children, from Haines School in Chinatown, are not on the playground or even in their neighborhood. They are on a field trip to a local Sports Authority.
“Maybe your mom will bring you back and buy you a pair?” suggested one parent chaperon to a wide-eyed Joyce Ma, reluctantly unbuckling the skates. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”
It is exactly that prospect that helps persuade Sports Authority--as well as a number of other companies, including Petco, Dominick’s, Pearle Vision, even Toys “R” Us--to pay to bring children into their stores on field trips.
Such excursions are on the rise, a trend fueled by constricting school budgets, tightening schedules that require shorter getaways, and--critics say--the further erosion of barriers between academics and commercialism.
Supporters, though, tout the trips as a cheap, efficient way for children to learn about everything from nutrition to pet responsibility.
“It works because it’s a valuable, fun experience,” said Susan Singer, president and founder of Field Trip Factory Inc., the Chicago-based company that says it books 10,000 to 12,000 such excursions nationwide each year. “Research shows that kids retain 80 percent more of a lesson when it’s reinforced in a real-life environment. We’ll go anywhere where there’s an opportunity to learn. We make it easy for the teacher and it’s free.”
Field Trip Factory isn’t the only company ferrying students to retail outlets, but it claims to be the largest, with a presence in 48 states. Locally, it has worked with districts from Lake Forest to Park Forest, Skokie to Springfield, said the company, which started in 1993. It said more than 45,000 Chicago-area schoolchildren take its trips each year.
All fees are paid for by corporate partners, which Singer declined to name. Now, a mere mouse-click away, is everything a teacher needs--right down to the permission slips. All the kids need to come up with is a few bucks for the bus--and the Field Trip Factory will even help with that, when needed.
Critics see this as evidence of an increasingly commercial culture. It’s about marketing masquerading as education and delivering a captive audience of young consumers--already stuffed on brand names and corporate logos--to marketers.
Gary Ruskin has heard all the arguments for letting business pick up the tab. As director of Commercial Alert, an anti-marketing group, he knows that advertising has seeped into virtually every corner of America’s schools--from the cafeteria soda machines to the football field, where the naming rights of the scoreboard are available to the highest bidder.
If Saturn (another popular Field Trip Factory destination) opens its showroom so kids can “view the interior structure of an automobile, learn about the functions of a car and observe the Saturn service crew in action"--what’s the big deal?
“So the message is that we already hammer students with advertising, so let’s hammer ‘em some more?” Ruskin asks from his Portland, Ore., office. “Some things are just too important to be for sale--and our kids are one of them.”
Businesses have been marketing in classrooms for decades. In the 1920s, Ivory Soap sponsored bar carving competitions; a decade later bankers forged alliances with students to buff up their Depression-battered images. In the 1980s, programs such as General Mills’ “Box Tops in Education” became a school staple, as did Channel One, the ad-saturated TV news network in 12,000 classrooms.
But such corporate partnerships really gained momentum during the last decade, not just because of dwindling public funds, but because young children wield more spending power than ever before.
“It’s about locking in brand loyalty when kids are young,” says Robert Kozinets, professor at the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University. “You get a lifetime of value.”
“It’s cheaper for companies to retain customers than to find new ones,” said Kozinets, who has studied the American Girl marketing strategy. “So, it makes sense to get consumers at the earliest age.”
Few schools prohibit field trips just because there may be a commercial element to them.
The Chicago Public Schools’ policy, for example, requires teachers to get approval from the principal, who then must submit an application to the area instructional officer, who has the authority to reject venues that could “jeopardize the safety of students and chaperons.”
School attendance is down at some area museums and cultural institutions, and officials said district budget crunches were one of the factors keeping children away.
Pat Kremer, a spokeswoman for the Field Museum, said students do not pay admission on field trips to the museum, but schools are responsible for transportation. That was one of the main reasons that student groups were down by 25 percent in 2003, Kremer said.
For the record, Singer is a “huge proponent” of museums, but there are certain pragmatic aspects to her outings, she said. Not only is money at a premium, but so is time. While a trip to view the baby chicks at the Museum of Science and Industry can take an entire day, students can hit the neighborhood Petco and be back in time for lunch.
Still, the value of classroom time was cited by some educators as a reason they would veto a retail destination. Given the pressures on schools to meet state and federal testing standards, lessons such as properly choosing produce or a bike helmet “can be taught at home,” said Gail Johnson, a principal at Western Avenue School in Flossmoor.
The Haines students visiting the Sports Authority in Lincoln Park on Wednesday were oblivious to any slippery slopes--unless they promised snow.
“That is so cool,” whispered Amy Cheung, navigating around a display of gleaming fiberglass skis. “What do you call those things again?”
In the basketball aisle, the children lined up in two teams--"fitness" and “safety"--and tried their hand at a jumper. Regardless of the results, each child’s efforts were met with rousing applause, led by Romando Batchelor, the exuberant tour leader.
The children heard a number of messages about safety, whether it’s about donning elbow and wrist guards for inline-skating or loading a backpack so as not to punish young backs.
But the quizzical looks returned when the tour veered toward boating or tennis, which, as Batchelor pointed out, can be played on both clay and grass courts.
“Who knows the two biggest names in tennis?” he asked, brandishing a Wilson racket with the images of Venus and Serena Williams. “Anyone?” The silence is deafening.
`It’s still good to be exposed’
A few feet away, the 1st graders crowd around another employee stringing a graphite model. “Who knows what he’s doing?” asked Batchelor, his effervescence never waning. This time, hands shot up. “Making clothes?” offered one student hopefully.
Tennis, it seems, is not yet big in Chinatown, where the median household income is less than $25,000 and many parents are first-generation Americans.
“There are lots of things that we might not be able to buy, but it’s still good to be exposed to it,” said Mee SooHoo, who has spent 32 years at Haines, first as a student, then as a teacher.
“We can learn about working hard to get something we want and also about saving too,” said SooHoo, a repeat customer with Field Trip Factory.
If done right, life lessons can be found anywhere, said Singer, who in the past has had banks and hospitals on the destination list. “A hotel would be great too. It’s like a mini-city.”
A former marketing executive, she organized her first field trip in 1993, to Giant Eagle, a Pittsburgh supermarket.
“I was really driven by a need to give something back, to use the skills that I’ve learned over the years in a way that can really help kids and education.”
The 60- to 90-minute script for each outing is written by the Field Trip Factory, which seeks to make the content educationally sound and age-appropriate.
At the end of the field trip, the Haines children were asked: “And what are we, boys and girls?”
They yelled back, “Sports Authorities!”
Each child was given a nylon lunch bag bearing the company logo on the way out.