After doing the timed writing yesterday about the advantages and disadvantages of corporate sponsorship in high schools, it really got me thinking as to whether or not I ever really see it in any of the high schools I travel to for sports.
Thinking about it, I don't really remember seeing it in many schools. There's one school in the Rock Valley conference that I remember distinctly having some advertisements up around there school, and this was one of the poorer schools in our conference. I guess it makes sense though-- that school didn't have the funding to pay for things on their own, so they turned to large corporations and had them foot the bill instead of raising property taxes or whatever else they decide to do in order to bring in more funding. However, you'd think that since the school was receiving corporate sponsorship in addition to the other funding they receive from the government and property taxes it would have been a nicer school with better quality facilities... but it definitely was not a nice school. So where is all this money going? Obviously I don't know all the details about what the teachers' salaries are and what the expenses are for that school, but it just makes me curious as to how a school like that can be so crappy when ours is so nice? We are a public school too, so why is our school so much nicer than so many of the other public schools in our area?
It seems to me that if a school feels it necessary to contaminate their students' learning by placing advertisements up all around the school, they might as well put up advertisements for a good company that will actually give them enough money to fix some things and create a some what decent learning environment. Otherwise, what's the point? You're going to contaminate their learning, and still have a crappy school? Pointless.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Well...McFarland is so nice because we're a wealthier community, but I know you already know that. I don't really agree with your point about contaminating learning and still having a crappy school being pointless. It's not like a corporate sponsorship is necessarily going to be pooling huge amounts of money in, and if a school is struggling for money they probably take what they can get. They might not be able to get a huge company to agree to sponsorship, so maybe they aren't capable of getting enough money to make their school extremely better. I think your points just seemed a little bit heartless, just my opinion. :)
ReplyDeleteKirsten...It's really weird. I was just thinking about how we don't have much advertising in our school yesterday and then BAM: after school I saw like four Got Milk? posters on the cafeteria wall. Talk about freaky! I disagree, I think that advertising doesn't contaminate schools unless all of the walls are plastered in ads (which I doubt would ever happen.)
ReplyDeleteI really liked all the points you brought up, and they really got me thinking. Why was that school still not very nice if they had sponsors? The only thing I could come up with is that sponsors are good, but they can't do everything. I didn't really think about that when writing my essay. Sponsors can help, but they are not a miracle cure, as I had somewhat thought before. Maybe, though, their school was even worse before they got a sponsor, so now they're still crappy but maybe less so than before.
ReplyDeleteKirsten
ReplyDeleteIt's always difficult to predict where the money is going. I liked how you considered that there are some variables that are simply unknown.
The biggest thing that stood out for me was your comment on why they don't have nicer facilities. My answer to that question is that I'm sure that the principal, board of education, or who ever deals with the budget, would rather divide up the corporate money for a smart board, new text books, or better quality supplies. The crappy facilities that they have probably still function as they should, therefore a new gym would be a waste of money.