McDonald’s Advertises on Report Cards and Upsets Parents
This is an interesting story. A Florida county put a McDonald’s promotion on school report cards that awards free Happy Meals to children who get good grades. This issue was highlighted by an advocacy group called the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC). They seem to do a lot of good work on behalf of parents and kids. Of personal interest to me is their work against the corporate sexualization of children because I have three daughters. My oldest is eight and I can already see the influences of marketing on her. It is scary to me that much of that marketing undermines me as a parent and what I am trying to teach her. Kids are very impressionable and need their parents to protect and guide them as they grow.
Susan Linn, the director of CCFC has a great quote in their release on the issue that sums it up well, “It bypasses parents and targets children directly with the message that doing well in school should be rewarded by a Happy Meal.” She goes on to say, “Turning report cards into ads for McDonald’s undermines parents efforts to encourage healthy eating.” Regardless of your view on whether McDonald’s is healthy or not, we should all agree that the parents, not a corporation and the school administration, should be making those decisions for kids.
What about you? Have you experienced marketing from corporations that you believe undermines you as a parent?
This is like complaining that almost all TV undermines my Christian worldview. I have a choice whether to participate. When my kids won circus tickets as part of our libraries summer reading program, I didn’t feel like the library was trying to turn reading into a circus ad. Just because they got free tickets didn’t mean that we had to go. As a parent, I can still say no.
Dec 13 at 11:46 pm
While I feel it’s nice to reward kids, I feel McDonald’s should not advertise on report cards. If they want to support good grades, they should just donate food vouchers or coupons to the school. And if children do well, then give them one. But, if their parents don’t agree with their menu, then, they don’t have to take them.
Dec 20 at 11:55 am
Being that I try to look at things from different points of view, I feel that advertising the reward on a report card may not be the most accurate way to go about the accomplishments of the children. As a parent of (4) whether I am promoting healthy eating or not for my children I think that just allowing them to understand the good deeds behing getting the good grades in school carries it’s own rewards and by McDonald’s rewarding them; that is just a small token for the efforts. It is just like the comment above which states that it is up to the parent to decide whether to take the child(children) to McDonald’s or not.
Dec 27 at 10:45 pm
[…] weeks back we highlighted a Florida county that allowed McDonald’s to market directly to children through report cards […]
Jan 9 at 3:52 pm
Why do kids need to be rewarded for everything they do? Some things we do just because it is the right thing to do. And why aren’t we rewarding the kids who study hard and give it their all, no matter what the outcome. And lastly I would prefer to see character traits rewarded instead of grades, this is where all students are on level playing ground. I don’t think McDonalds is the problem, I think it is the fact that we all want to give our kids more stuff, which is being capitalized on by corporate america. IF parents don’t make these rewards a big deal kids won’t either.
Jan 11 at 9:16 am
Blog entries like this dilute the site’s impact.
Apr 17 at 3:20 pm