May 29th, 2005
Sex Ed, Provided By Old Spice
By Marek Fuchs
New York Times
In the spring, county schools generally start preparing fifth graders for the transition to adulthood. In many districts, there are middle-school orientation visits, and there is also a preliminary birds-and-bees talk.
Many of us may have squeamish memories of our schools’ efforts at enlightening us about our soon-to-dawn sexuality. I remember being part of a crowd herded into the auditorium at the H.C. Crittenden in Armonk to watch a grainy film. I was seated next to a girl I had a wild crush on, and as the earnest narrator touched upon the subject of sweat glands, I nearly spontaneously combusted with embarrassment.
Embarrassment is part of the experience, perhaps inevitably; but in many Westchester schools—indeed, at 85 percent of the fifth-grade classrooms in the nation —Procter & Gamble is, too. At least, that’s the figure according to Michelle Vaeth, a spokeswoman, who verified that the company provides an education package with reading material, a video and product samples: an Old Spice stick for the boys, and a Secret stick plus Always pads for the girls.
The title of the package is ‘’Always Changing: About You,’’ and the subtitle is ‘’Puberty and Stuff.’’
Here’s a sample of the content, from Page 13 of the pamphlet: ‘’I used to be really worried about sweating a lot, but since I started using an antiperspirant every morning, I’m dry all day.’’
How best to advise fifth graders on sweating is debatable. But when the adviser is a consumer-product behemoth trading educational material for access to a captive audience, well, that occasions second thoughts.
‘’It’s just wrong to use compulsory-attendance laws to compel students to review ads,’’ said Gary Ruskin, the executive director of Commercial Alert, a watchdog group based in Portland, Ore. ‘’A school’s mission is to teach children to read, write, add and think. Not to shop.’’
The first real outcry against what many parents perceived as a commercial incursion into the classroom came 15 years ago when Channel One, the Chris Whittle creation, installed televisions in schools to deliver news in exchange for advertisements. Supporters said the commercials were merely bankrolling the content and asserted that children were hardly naifs living in a commercial vacuum. But many others were using terms like ‘’devil’s bargain.’’
Over the years, the deals have kept coming, with progressively less fuss: advertisements on gymnasium scoreboards and wrapping paper for textbooks; pacts to vend a particular brand of soda; even signage on the roofs of schools near airports, said William Chipps of the International Events Group Sponsorship Report, a trade publication that addresses sponsorship issues.
‘’It’s just happening more and more in schools, given the budget shortfalls,’’ Mr. Chipps said.
But even parents who have witnessed this trend disapprovingly probably hadn’t anticipated Procter & Gamble’s pushing product samples while holding forth to fifth graders on sweat glands.
Most of the ‘’lesson plan’’ is pretty tame. Aside from the product handouts, there’s not much you wouldn’t see elsewhere. That is all the more reason, Mr. Ruskin argued, to eliminate Procter & Gamble’s involvement. ‘’There’s nothing in the P&G material that couldn’t be done without the commercial content,’’ he said.
The company says it is merely trying to help itself while also helping the community. It has never pushed the program into schools, Ms. Vaeth added; it has merely accommodated the many schools that have signed up. And with limited resources and teachers who already juggle course material on different subjects, she said, a ready-made package comes in handy.
Kelly Adams, who teaches middle schoolers health and physical education in Briarcliff, says she doesn’t see the harm in having a corporate source; students are so used to being bombarded by ads and fads that they will not become lifelong Old Spice users just because they are given a free stick.
But Mr. Ruskin says that’s not the point. ‘’At school, children are taught to obey,’’ he said. ‘’So anytime the authority of the school is harnessed, it can be very influential.’’ In this case, he sees the corporate sponsor as too easily preying on children’s insecurities—whether about menstruation or perspiration —for financial gain.
‘’There is a special vulnerability in discussions about uncomfortable subjects at times—like fifth grade—when students are so impressionable,’’ is how he put it. ‘’That’s the principal reason why corporations love corporate indentured education.’’