When you sit down in front of your television at night, what do you see? You see your television show, but what else? Most people will also be bombarded with commercials every few minutes. When you think of an advertisement, most people think of television advertisements via commercials or magazine advertisements. Either way, you mostly see these in your free time. That may begin to change soon.     

Due to the budget cuts in public schooling, many schools have resorted to advertising products to respective students inside of the district; from placing advertisements on school busses for the general population to view, to placing advertisements on student’s report cards to target students and their parents.             

These new advertisements in the school system will cause an immediate distraction to students. If all of your papers have ads on the bottom of them, this will cause students to think about the product and lose focus on their homework or tests. If you place the advertisements on the side of a school or on school busses, it will give the school a bad name by making it look extremely poor. I would not want to attend a school with an advertisement slapped on the wall of the building – I would be embarrassed and ashamed.               

The way to stop schools from having to resort to this sort of nonsense is for the government to increase spending on public schools. Until that happens, the public school system will be in shambles and lose their reputations, with parents preferring their child to attend a private school. How will this affect you? As schools lose their budgets, schools end up cutting many programs. Many schools have already cut out programs such as art and music. If schools still cannot keep up with the changing budget, many more pertinent programs will be cut; including field trips, physical education and technology in the school.              

So are advertisements in the school a good thing, or a bad thing? They are a quick fix for a troubled economy, but they cannot stay. A school with advertisements will quickly lose its reputation, causing other unforeseen issues in the future. The only long-term solution is for an increased school budget. But if used in small doses, and aimed at the correct audience, I think that the advertisements in the school may be a good option for a short period of time.

SOURCE: Advertising in school becoming more common
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-06-03/advertising-in-schools/55366346/1

Written by: Alec, 9^th grade