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Captive fifth- and sixth-graders across the Portland metro area are being forced to build Nike shoes. And they're not being paid a dime. No, Nike hasn't shifted its infamous production line from Asian factories to local elementary schools. Rather, the company is sponsoring a program that purports to turn the Nike shoe-manufacturing process into an environmental lesson for youngsters. While the plight of the Portland playground set isn't drawing protest from labor-rights groups, it is creating concern among education and consumer activists who are wary of the increasing presence of commercialism in the classroom. "Ostensibly this is an environmental lesson," says Tamara Schwarz of the Center for Commercial-Free Public Education. "But you have to ask: Why is the Swoosh everywhere? In a lot of ways this is just a Nike commercial in the classroom." (The Air-to-Earth lesson kit includes a poster featuring NBA star Gary Payton holding a Nike shoe aloft.) Teacher advocates agree that Nike's program puts the integrity of the public classroom at risk. "It sounds to me like Nike isn't only exploiting children workers in factories overseas. Now they're exploiting American children," says Kathleen Lyons, spokeswoman for the National Education Association. "This is a despicable use of classroom time. It's appalling." Harsh words for a fun lesson plan that capitalizes on kids' interest in sneakers to teach the value of sustainable economics. But Lyons isn't the only skeptic. Consumers Union, the watchdog group that publishes Consumer Reports, is currently evaluating the educational legitimacy of the lesson plan. Nike estimates that 800 classes in 10 cities across the country have used its kit to build a running shoe--complete with Swoosh--as a way to teach kids about manufacturing environmentally friendly products. The company wouldn't say how much it is spending, but it has dedicated three employees to the program. This spring Nike brought the lesson plan to an 11th city--Portland--offering a training session to two dozen local fifth- and sixth-grade teachers. Judging from the surveys filled out by teachers who participated in the Feb. 24 training session at Sunset High in Beaverton, the Air-to-Earth program went over well. Most teachers praised the "fun," "hands-on" approach of working directly with shoe parts. "We want kids to think about the life cycle of a product," says Nike spokeswoman Dawn Leonetti. She boasts that Nike has transformed its factory process into an environmental lesson that teaches kids about Nike efforts to go green: avoid waste, use water-based solvents rather than toxic glues, and manufacture recyclable products. Critics complain that the lesson plan also teaches children what a great company Nike is. Nike's green lesson comes at a time when companies are increasingly angling to get their products and ads into schools ("The Pepsi Challenge," WW, April 1, 1998). Nike's Air-to-Earth lesson represents a related, and perhaps more troubling, trend: corporate-designed curriculum. "This is a problem that is more grave than the ads," says Anita Holmes, assistant director of educational services at Consumers Union. "This is the warping of education." In 1995, Consumers Union released a 70-page study on corporate-sponsored curriculum titled "Captive Kids." The group continues to track corporate ploys such as the Chips Ahoy math lesson--aimed at verifying the impressive chocolate-chip content of a single Chips Ahoy cookie--and Campbell's Prego spaghetti sauce science lesson, which showed that Prego is thicker than Ragu. The report evaluated corporate-sponsored materials on two criteria. First, it looked at how blatantly commercial the lesson was. Second, it assessed the legitimate educational value of the lesson. Overall, the report found that nearly 80 percent of corporate-sponsored lesson plans contained biased or incomplete information, promoting consumption of the sponsor's product or service. Consumers Union is still evaluating Nike's Air-to-Earth lesson. But when it comes to the level of commercialism in the curriculum, Holmes says Nike clearly is casting itself as a good guy to build brand loyalty among kids. "There is no question this is a PR play from Nike," she says. "This is highly commercial, veering toward being an ad for the sponsor's product." Leonetti insists the Air-to-Earth program isn't about marketing the Swoosh. She notes that the program was developed in concert with the North American Association for Environmental Education, a nonprofit consortium of environmental educators. "This is a full-fledged lesson that teaches about the full life cycle of a product," Leonetti says. "As future entrepreneurs and business leaders, we get kids thinking about sustainable products. The bottom line is, we're a company that's in a position to spend money on education so we can give back to the community." It's true that Nike has the money to spend on education. Ultimately, that sheds light on the problem with corporate-sponsored classroom lessons. While Nike, McDonald's, DuPont, Exxon and a host of business associations like the Polystyrene Packaging Council can afford to write their world views onto public blackboards, others cannot. Rather than debating the legitimacy of a Nike lesson plan, it seems more appropriate to step back and debate the legitimacy of using any formal lesson plan in the classroom that is developed by a company searching for new consumers. |
