*(CNN) – In tests for teacher Tom Farber’s high school class, students can demonstrate their mastery of calculus and find out where to get braces or even a haircut.
Squeezed by classroom budget cuts, the Rancho Bernardo High School teacher is selling ads on his exams to cover the costs of printing them. *
I’m not gonna pit the guy. He’s a teacher trying to do what he can to get the stuff he needs to do his job. Stuff that oughta be provided by the schools. He’s found a relatively painless way to raise money to copy tests for his classes.
I still have problems with this concept:
School spending priorities are out of whack. I understand budget cuts. There’s a lot of that going around. When the funds are not there, you have to do something. However, if you happen to be a school, you need to cut everything else before you touch things that affect your core mission. If you have to cut, start with extra-curricular activities. Yeah, I like sports, I support the arts, and all that stuff…but classroom supplies trump shoulderpads and band instruments.
There’s some potential for litigation. Local church wants to buy an ad, and now some kid is staring at his calculous test while being urged to trust in Jeebus. Or the teacher choose not to sell the ad to the church. For church, substitute NOMRL, NAMBLA, NRA, DNC, or some other group that would piss you off.
I don’t like the precedent. If it’s ok to sell an “Eat at Joe’s” ad at the bottom of the page, is it also ok to have word problems that incorporate trademarks? “Johnny has 5. McBurgers(TM) cost .99 off the Cheapstuff Menu™, and tax is 7%. How many delicious McBurgers™ can Johnny buy for his $5?”
Bottom line…it’s tacky. Yes, I hate advertising. I hate it on the internet, I hate it on television, I hate it on the radio, I hate it with green eggs and ham. At the very least, let the schools remain ad-free in the classroom.
Tacky, but maybe necessary. I agree that school administrations often have mis-placed priorities, but this teacher seems to have kept his. The goal is to edumacate the chilluns. Everything else is secondary.
In truth, I have often daydreamed of selling ad space on our Speech and Debate team. Something like “This oratory sponsored by San Manuel Casino. San Manuel - the best in Indian Gaming.” Or maybe selling as space on the kids’ sweats, sorta like NASCAR.
I don’t have a problem with the teacher trying to get what he needs for the kids. Certainly do not want him chastised or anything.
Can’t accept this as “necessary” though. It’s a cop out by the administration. They’d rather let Big Oil re-write the environmental policy textbook than make the hard choice to cut the football team. I love football. But it ain’t as important as classroom supplies. I say cut it, and let the parents call their elected officials to raise hell about it.
I gotta agree. The teacher sounds like kind of dedication and smarts we need to be imparting on the next generation so they can totally represent yo.
How so? Is he compelled to take any business he could get? Could NAMBLA sue the Disney magazine for denying them ad space?
I’d rather students get McSmarts then no smarts at all. I think it’s okay in an emergency situation like this seems to be. This needs to be fixed with proper funding for school supplies by the district or state.
“from the makers AD Block extension for Firefox, and white out corparation comes Ad Block For Tests.*
*requires manual ad blocking on each ad. allow 30 seconds to dry, don’t sniff ya stoner.”
A church is the easiest example to tackle. State school. Atheist kid. Establishment Clause.
Other groups may also have First Amendment and/or equal protection arguments. You have a state actor making content based decisions about what is and is not acceptable speech.
So wouldn’t the student’s right to Freedom of Religion over ride the church’s Freedom of Speech? I think decency laws would filter out NAMBLA especially considering it’s minors.
The NRA could cause trouble, but if they blocked ads from all political organizations;that should cut down on trouble.
How much you willing to spend, out of already tight budgets, to find out? Somebody files a lawsuit on either side of the issue, names the school/school board/district/whatever as a party, they’ve gotta defend.
School ain’t gonna go bankrupt, but they make deeper cuts. Sorry kids. No more AP program, we gotta pay to defend a lawsuit.
There’s plenty of zealots out there that care only about their own agenda. Say Fred Phelps wants to sponsor the biology final with “Darwin was a fag enabler”. Think he’s gonna back down over a little bad publicity? He’d probably masturbate over the hate mail.
Ads on school materials are an abomination. School should be about teaching objective information and methods, with as little bias as possible, and it’s pretty clear that allowing ads (of any sort) lets an avoidable bias into education.
That said, I can’t blame the teacher, here, since it looks like he’s choosing the lesser of two evils. The real blame needs to go to whoever decided to let the school’s funding go so low that this was necessary, whether that be the school board, the state government, or the voters. We absolutely need to give the schools the resources they need to do their jobs without this kind of desperate measure.
Quoth Oakminster:
I see nothing in the linked article that says anything about sports or other extracurriculars. For all we know, the school has already cut the football team, and this is the next step.
I’m pretty sure they woulda mentioned that if it had happened, but that’s not the point. If the school can’t afford to run off tests, they don’t need to be running any extracurricular activities. There is nothing in the article to suggest they have already eliminated those things.
Not really gonna matter in litigation. Doesn’t really matter who the parties are, or even what the particular issue is. Plaintiff is gonna be saying his rights were violated, and he’s entitled to a legal remedy…whether that be money damages or injunctive relief. If Defendants hadn’t violated his rights in the first place, he would not have had to file suit. How Defendant funds legal expenses isn’t on Plaintiff’s radar.
The point of this particular objection is that selling advertising on tests to cover printing costs opens to door to legal expenses that could be entirely avoided by not selling advertising on tests.
Our team sweats are rather stylish, I’ll admit. Zippered blue hoodies with a name embroidered on the front (mine says “Demigod”), and the team logo and motto on the back in gold (Yucaipa Speech and Debate above and below a standing aardvark, below the motto “Cacoathes Loquendi”).
Something like “Enter Sandman” would be cool. Maybe have the kids pop bubble gum (smoking is bad for kids) and chug energy drinks (no beer for minors). Bonus points if one the kids gets color (bleeds) before the match (debate) even starts.
Why yes I am riffing on Sandman’s entrance from EC-F’N-W. I’m in a weird mood. Go with it
When I was a kid it was against school policy to require any outlay of money by parents for school supplies. Paper, pens, pencils and all other supplies were paid for by the school district. The only exception was band instruments, and they even had a limted supply of those available.
I’m pretty sure if I were still in school, I would immediately boycott any business that sponsored my tests. I appreciate any company that paid money to help keep Night Court on the air. Calc exams, not so much.
Schools should stop shelling out ridiculous rates for textbooks and develop curriculums that kids can research on the internet from their laptops. Textbooks are obsolete.
