Trash or treasure?

Every week. sometimes a couple times a week. San Jose teacher Nick Leon dutifully unloads his mailbox and begins sifting through a pile of free curricular materials that have just arrived from corporations and interest groups.

A few he'll keep, but most he'll pitch. Some of the materials may have educational value, Leon explains, but their main motive is to sell something--a product or a point of view--and he's not buying.

Going after students' hearts, minds, and pocketbooks isn't a new phenomenon. What's new is the volume of free materials, the increasingly sophisticated ways they're packaged as instructional tools, and tight budget times. The combination has some parents and educators groups uneasy.
Among the most blatantly one-sided handouts:

* "Decision Earth," a packet from Procter & Gamble (discontinued in the United States but still available in Canada), teaches that disposable diapers are better for the environment than cloth--and that clear-cut logging "mimics nature's way of getting rid of trees."

* The "Prego Thickness Experiment" asks students to prove Campbell Soup's claim that its spaghetti sauce is thicker than Ragu's. This exercise supposedly teaches "scientific thinking."

* "Puerto Rico: The More You Look, the More You See" is a curriculum guide financed by the Puerto Rico Tourism Company and the island's governor's office, written and distributed by Scholastic magazines. Some 219,000 teachers got the guide--and an incentive to use it. Twenty teachers who used the materials "the most creatively" won free vacations to the island.

* "Scientists and the Alaska Oil Spill," a videotape produced by Exxon, claims that the company's cleanup of the Valdez oil spill in Alaska was flawless. The tape shows workers spray-cleaning the rocks along the shoreline but neglects to mention that the technique causes severe damage by killing essential bacteria and flora.

* "Soft Drinks and Nutrition," a colorful poster produced by the National Soft Drink Association, compares soft drinks to more nutritious foods. "A diet of milk alone would result in dietary deficiencies." the poster says. "Likewise, soft drink consumption alone would be unhealthy."

Helping corporations and other interest groups get to you is an entire industry of producers and distributors of in-school materials. Lifetime Learning Systems, which bills itself as the industry leader, boasts that its school materials can help corporate sponsors reach up to 63 million students and their parents.

Firms like Lifetime offer sponsors a unique opportunity to "imprint" brand loyalty in children, market their message in schools without "clutter or competition," and influence the buying decisions of students' families through the "pester factor" and take-home materials.

"Children ages 4-12 influence more than $131 billion of their parents' spending power each year," the Lifetime sales brochure reminds customers.

"Coming from schools," Lifetime adds, "all these materials create an extra measure of credibility and give your message extra weight." Even more so when they reach the "invaluable marketing resource" known as the school teacher.

School systems can only contend with this marketing onslaught through a "concerted effort from the school board down to the classroom teacher," says Charlotte Baecher, education services director for Consumers Union.

Baecher calls for a "dynamic" review procedure in each district--similar to that for textbooks--and "mutual support throughout" the process.

Review or no review, many NEA members see nothing wrong with using materials from non-traditional sources.

Sandra Hopkins, who teaches second grade at Peters Elementary School in Slatington, Pennsylvania, supplements her nutrition lessons with materials from the American Dairy Council.