Children and Materialism
Reading the chapters by Sternheimer I realized what a brat I might have been to my parents. Wanting things because my friends had them and getting that thing and realizing that I don’t really use it as much as I thought. I agree when she stated that “Public schools are going to continue to feel pressure to take corporate money”(263) This is a big deal because schools aren’t receiving the amount money from state and local governments so these corporations come in and give them funding to put up some poster. Sternheimer also talks about these corporations are not trying to give the school money because they care about the children’s future but because they “see the children as consumers who will buy the product if it is there to buy”(263). To think of children as consumers sounds crazy but when the same video games come out every year with a minor change and on the commercial it says “5/5 on graphics, best game yet” these kids just see that and want it now, IPhone is another example, slight change and everyone needs to have it. Channel One when pitched sounds like a great way to connect to other people and schools but when you look into the meat of it these kids are, at school, and are being forced to watch advertisements in between the learning and “the schools are being given a 50 thousand dollar bonus for having the program”(262).
I have read The Story of Stuff at my junior college in a political science class and learning how we are treating the earth is a hard thing to take down and watching the video brought it all back. “the U.S. has 5% percent of the world’s population but we use 35% of the world’s resources.” This is a very bad bit of data and the United States is a super power but how powerful can we be when we contain other countries resources to provide ourselves with more stuff we don’t need. The video also mentioned that “now that we have taken up all our countries resources we have to mosey on to the next and clean them out now.” Going to the third world and chopping down trees and mining for metals jus to keep our economy strong when it is really making us worse off. This movie makes feline there is no hope for us because people need to come together as a society to make a change but that is unlikely to happen unless we change our whole way of living. Lets go next generation!
Scott Lang
