PTA News May 30, 2007
PTA joins child advocates to stop commercialism and support nutrition standards in schools.
by Ellie Goldberg, VPLegislation@masspta.org
PTA was in good company on May 30 in Hearing Room A-1 as Ellie Goldberg, MassPTA VP of Legislation and Mary Ann Stewart, MassPTA board member, testified at the Joint Committee on Public Health public hearing in support of HB 489, "An Act Relative to the Public Health Impact of Commercialism in Schools."
Organized by the Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood, the first panel to testify included experts Susan Linn, Juliet Schor, and Diane Levin. (See their bios and credentials below.)
The second panel included Ellie Goldberg, speaking on behalf of MassPTA, Lin Vickery, a parent from Lunenberg describing problems caused by Channel One in her child's school, and Dr. Alan Meyers, associate professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, co-chair of the Obesity Committee of the Massachusetts Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics and staff pediatrician for the Nutrition and Fitness for Life program at Boston Medical Center.
Next Mary Ann testified as a parent of three school-age children and an engaged citizen. See Goldberg Testimony re Marketing in Schools (below) and M A Stewart Commercialism Testimony
Quick note: Earlier in the morning, Ellie also attended a rally organized by the Massachusetts Public Health Association on the steps outside the State House to publicize the need to set nutrition standards in schools. For more information on H2168 - "An Act to promote proper school nutrition." Click to view school nutrition bill fact sheet.
The press conference included Harold D. Cox (until recently Cambridge's chief public health officer and now associate dean for public health at the Boston University School of Public Health), John Auerbach (Department of Public Health Commissioner), and Representative Peter Koutoujian (Public Health Committee co-chair and chief bill sponsor) and others public health, nutrition and school health experts making the link between soaring rates of childhood obesity, diabetes, and other junk food related diseases and disorders, especially in children.
If you didn't blink, you could see me in the Channel 5 news video of the press conference. See story and video clips: Banning Junk Food Junk Food Ban Debated
For another expert reference on the urgent need for school nutrition standards see the Institute of Medicine (Washington DC) report: Nutrition Standards for Foods in Schools: Leading the Way toward Healthier Youth April 25, 2007 Fact Sheet Report Brief
Other bills related to school health and child and adolescent health on the May 30 Joint Committee on Public Health School Health, Child & Adolescent Health agenda included:
H489 – "An Act relative to the public health impact of commercialism in schools." – Representative Peter Koutoujian
H1172 – "An Act relative to health education." – Representative Ruth Balser
H2005 - "An Act relative to the creation of a sports injury commission."- Representative Cory Atkins
H2095 - "An Act to improve access to nutritious foods and physical activity."- Representative Linda Dorcena Forry
H2107 - "An Act establishing a health education program in the public schools."- Representative Mary Grant
H2168 - "An Act to promote proper school nutrition."- Representative Peter Koutoujian
H2216 - "An Act relative to the creation of a sports injury commission."- Representative Douglas Peterson
S1220 -"An Act relative to the creation of a sports injury commission." – Senator Cynthia Stone Creem
S1262 - "An Act promoting healthy alternatives in public school food programs." – Senator Richard Moore
Panel 1 Experts. Bios and Credentials:
Susan Linn is an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Associate Director of the Media Center at Judge Baker Children's Center. She is also co-founder of the coalition Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. In her book, Consuming Kids, she takes a comprehensive and unsparing look at the demographic advertisers call "the kid market," taking readers on a compelling and disconcerting journey through modern childhood as envisioned by commercial interests. Consuming Kids reveals the magnitude of this problem and shows what can be done about it.
Juliet Schor's research over the last ten years has focused on issues pertaining to trends in work and leisure, consumerism, the relationship between work and family, women's issues and economic justice. Schor's latest book is Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Scribner 2004). Born to Buy is both an account of marketing to children from inside the agencies and firms and an assessment of how these activities are affecting children. Schor is chair of the Department of Sociology at Boston College, a board member and co-founder of the Center for a New American Dream, an organization devoted to transforming North American lifestyles to make them more ecologically and socially sustainable. Before joining Boston College, she taught at Harvard University for 17 years, in the Department of Economics and the Committee on Degrees in Women's Studies. She also teaches periodically at Schumacher College, an International Center for Ecological Studies based in south-west England.
Diane Levin is Professor of Education at Wheelock College in Boston where she has been involved in training early childhood professionals for over twenty-five years. Currently she teaches courses on play, media and violence prevention. She has a B.S. in Child Development from Cornell University, an M.S.Ed. in Special Education from Wheelock College, and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. from Tufts University in Sociology of Education and Child Development. An internationally recognized expert, Levin helps professionals and parents understand and counteract the harmful effects of violence, media and commercial culture on children. Levin is a co-founder of Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children's Entertainment (TRUCE: www.truceteachers.org), which prepares materials to help parents deal with the media and commercial culture in their children's lives. She is also a co-founder of the Coalition for a Commercial-Free Childhood (www.commercialfreechildhood.org), which works to education the public about and end the commercial exploitation of children. She is a Research Associate at Lesley University's Center for Peaceable Schools.
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Massachusetts PTA
P.O. Box 421
Rehoboth, MA 02769
To the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Public Health, May 30, 2007
State Senator Susan C. Fargo
State House. Room 504, Boston, MA 02133
and
State Representative Peter J. Koutoujian
State House Room 130, Boston, MA 02133
Re: House Bill 489, "An Act Relative to the Public Health Impact of Commercialism in Schools."
On behalf of the Massachusetts Parent Teacher Association, an affiliate of National PTA, the largest and oldest child advocacy organization in the nation, I am writing in support of House Bill 489, "An Act Relative to the Public Health Impact of Commercialism in Schools
The Massachusetts PTA supports the goal of protecting children from commercial exploitation by prohibiting advertising and marketing on school grounds or on property that is owned or leased by a public school.
We agree with the recent recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics that pediatricians should work with parents, schools, community groups, and others to ban or severely curtail school-based advertising in all forms. We need a strong bill to set a high standard to protect children from the growing commercialism in our schools and to help us work together to stop all exploitation of children by advertisers.
We speak on behalf of children because they are especially vulnerable to the ubiquitous and unethical advertising and branding that is all around them. As responsible adults, we are concerned about marketing that feeds the growing epidemic of obesity and other physical disorders and mental health problems, especially in children. As responsible adults, our responsibility is to protect children from corporate marketers who aggressively promote damaging values and destructive behaviors to children, such as violence, hedonism, addiction, materialism, and fast food.
Advertising and branding is so pervasive and so manipulative that it has distorted cultural values, threatens children's physical and mental health, undermines parent and child relationships, and hinders education and healthy development. This marketing in schools, in all media, and in new and insidious ways via new technologies is explicitly designed to brainwash our children. The presence of logos and advertising in schools conveys an endorsement and creates an attachment to products and manufacturers that exploit children and encourages extravagance and waste.
These corporate advertisers take advantage of school officials and parents in underfunded schools. Underfunding of schools has opened the door to advertisers that work to turn schools into agents of businesses and our children into walking billboards wearing logos and brand names.
Today too many schools cooperate in corporate programs that encourage families to participate in product promotions and in advertising campaigns that lure children to websites for more indoctrination into the culture of fast food, violence and consumerism.
MassPTA believes that HB 489 will protect children and promote the shared responsibility of pediatricians, parents, teachers, and policy makers to help schools achieve their primary mission of promoting and protecting the healthy development of children.
Yours truly,
Ellie Goldberg, M.Ed. 617 965-9637
79 Elmore Street
Newton, MA 02459-1137
on behalf of the Massachusetts Parent Teachers Association
