This is an excerpt from a Huffington Post article about Morgan Spurlock’s new movie POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold:
Spurlock notes a particularly upsetting sequence of the film in which he visits a school district in Florida that, because of incessant budget cuts, is forced to sell advertising on its busses, chain-link fences, classroom televisions and any other surface that a local dentist’s logo or chain restaurant can be slapped down on. Highlighting the continuing rise of in-school entertainment production companies such as Channel One, a company that provides TVs to schools in exchange for captive audience for their ad-filled morning content, Spurlock notes that minds are truly for sale.
“Ultimately I think you want to keep stuff like this out of schools. Schools is a big one,” Spurlock said, shifting to a more passionate tone when asked where he drew the most important line. “I think you do want schools to be a sacred place, I think you do want school to be a place where, the girl [interviewed in a classroom] says such a great thing in the movie, she says, ‘School should teach you how to think, not what to think.’ And I loved that she said that, because she’s spot on. That’s exactly what a school should be. But I think from Channel One to what’s happening now with corporations and advertisers wanting to come in, kind of capitalizing on these cash strapped school districts, is problematic.”
