Consuming Kids

After watching the video, respond to 2 of the 4 questions that follow.

1.  Do the makers of this video seem to have an "agenda?"  If so, what is their purpose?
2.  Do you agree with the argument presented in this video, that advertisers are attempting to create a generation of "super consumers" out of today's youth?
3.  How has advertising to children changed over the years?
4.  With the ability of advertisers to reach people everywhere now (internet, TV, radio, smartphones, etc.), what kind of "consumer culture" do you believe will exist in 20 years - when you are adults, with jobs and children of your own?  Will you support the same buying habits in your children that you have now?

Commercialization of Childhood

Ending the Commercialization of Childhood
By: The Alliance for Childhood


     The Alliance for Childhood has joined 25 other organizations to form a new coalition, Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children (SCEC), to oppose the ever-growing presence of advertising aimed at children. Corporations now spend more than $12 billion annually marketing to children, according to information compiled by SCEC, which also reports the following:


*Children consume over 40 hours of media a week after school and see about 20,000 commercials a year on television alone.
*Marketing influences every aspect of children’s lives: the foods they want to eat, the way they want to look, how they interact with parents and friends, and how they play.
*Children tend to believe what they see and do not understand that ads are meant to sell them something. They have trouble differentiating between commercials and programs.
*Advertisers work with psychologists to develop marketing strategies that encourage children to nag their parents.
*Ninety percent of Saturday morning TV ads are for foods high in sugar, fat, salt, and calories—and this in a time of growing problems of obesity and Type II diabetes in children.
*Forty percent of fifth grade girls report dieting; discontent about body image correlates to how often girls read fashion magazines.


     The Alliance for Childhood joined other concerned groups in a public protest of the Golden Marble Awards, an advertising-industry celebration of “excellence” in advertisements aimed at children. The awards pay no attention to how the products marketed affect children and their families. Past winners, for example, include ad campaigns for violent toys, such as the Alien Autopsy action figure, and makers of food high in calories, fat, and sugar.
     In contrast, Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children gave “Have You Lost Your Marbles” Awards to six corporations whose practices are considered especially harmful to children. SCEC also gave positive awards, including its highest honor, the Inspirational Leadership Award to the Government of Sweden for leading the fight in the European Union to ban television advertising to children, setting an example for how individual governments can act to protect children from commercial exploitation. SCEC’s web site http://www.commercialexploitation.com has posted much material about the coalition’s summit and demonstration outside the Grand Hyatt Hotel where the industry awards were made.
    The coalition has grown rapidly from seeds planted one year ago, when three people who were appalled by the Golden Marble Awards decided to protest them. They were Alvin Poussaint, M.D., the prominent Harvard child psychiatrist who directs the Media Center of the Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston; Susan Linn, Ph.D., the psychologist and gifted ventriloquist who is also assistant director of the Media Center; and Diane Levin, Ph.D., of Wheelock College in Boston, a psychologist who helped found the group TRUCE, Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children’s Entertainment. A full list of the SCEC members with web site links can be found at SCEC’s web site. At this year’s protest, a colorful array of signs, carried by the 90 or so demonstrators, summed up many of the issues in graphic ways. They read:


*Children’s minds are not for sale.
*Public education not corporate education.
*What’s worse than taking candy from a baby? Selling it to her.
*Happy meals are not on the food pyramid.
*Mothers say, Back Off! Let us raise our children in peace.
*Children are supposed to play with puppets, not be puppets.
*Some signs were held by children:
*I am not a target market. I am a child.
*Madison Avenue leave me alone.
*Stay out of my mind.
*Stay out of my heart.
*Stay out of my piggy bank.


     The day before the public protest, SCEC sponsored a summit to address the issue of the commercialization of childhood. One of the presentations was by Tim Kasser, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology at Knox College in Galesburg, IL. Kasser describes research showing that materialistic values often go hand in hand with a lower sense of well-being. A summary of his research is available as part of the Alliance for Childhood web site.
     The declining health and well-being of children is a primary concern of the Alliance. There are many contributing factors to this, but the increase in the commercialization of childhood is certainly a major one. We urge all parents, educators, and other child advocates to speak out now against advertising aimed at children. We also urge every company and every advertiser to establish a firm policy that they will not advertise to children.


Thanks to the Alliance for Childhood for this article from its website. The Alliance for Childhood may be reached at P.O. Box 444, College Park, MD 20741. Its web site address is www.allianceforchildhood.net

Please comment on two of the following questions in complete sentences:
1.  This article shows only point of view.  What arguments might the advertising companies have in response to this?
2.  In your opinion, should advertising companies be held responsible for the techniques and content of their ads?  Why?
3.  How much of an effect do you think advertising really has on the decisions that kids make?  Does advertising influence your decisions?
4.  What role should parents play in this?  Should they be supervising what their children are watching on TV and teaching them about how to make good buying decisions?

Lord of the Flies quotes

Choose one of the quotes below and for that one:

1. Tell the circumstances surrounding that quote
2. Explain the significance of the quote in relation to the story

pg 103
"However Simon thought of the beast, there rose before his inward sight the picture of a human ot once heroic and sick."

pg 64
"He capered toward Bill and the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness."

pg 62
"Here invisible yet strong , was the taboo ofn the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger's arm was consditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins."

Egyptian Mythology

9th Grade Literature

The mythologies that we have from the Egyptians depict a rich society and developed civilization that created some remarkable achievements. As with many cultures, these stories were a central part of their belief system. In addition to being a part of their belief system though, these stories had a huge impact on their everyday lives for both the royalty and peasants.
1. From what we have viewed in class in Engineering an Empire and read of their mythology, how much of Egyptian society was directed by their beliefs?
2. What accomplishments were a direct result of their beliefs and stories?

Welcome Back!

This is the official blogging area for Mr. Parker's literature classes. You will be asked, throughout the year, to respond to posts here. This is a fun way to share your thoughts and ideas in a social forum.

Rich!

Eliza's father is quite upset with Pickering for giving his name to a rich, American philanthropist, who left Alfred a large sum of money. This sudden wealth has changed Doolittle's life quite a bit - and his his view, not for the better. Most of us, unless we are already rich, dream of becoming obscenely wealthy so that we don't have to worry about money. We could buy anything we wanted to, go where we wanted and not have to work. What could be wrong with that? Yet, many people that have lotteries or come into sudden wealth report that they wish that it had never happened. Why? They claim that "relatives" suddenly appear, asking for money; sick and porr people constantly request money; their lives change so much, so quickly that they lose their identity; they don't know how to manage money and spend it unwisely and end up poorer than before; their friends become very resentful of their good luck; they move into areas and try to adopt new values and make new friends - inseuccessfully; they become depressed and become involved with drugs and alcohol... the list goes on.

You wake up tomorrow morning and find that somehow, 25 million dollars has shown up in your bank account. The bank says that it is yours and there has been no mistake... In multiple, COMPLETE sentences, tell me:

1. How would you spend the money?
2. How would your life change for the better?
3. What would you be afraid of?

Pygmalion Through the Decades

Shaw's adaptation of the the story of Galatea and Pygamlion has been the basis for a great many stories - the musical My Fair Lady, movies such as She's All That and episodes of popular TV shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the Simpsons and Family Guy. His story line of a person choosing to change in order to be accepted by a "better" level of society and the unforeseen circumstances has remained popular for almost a century and still seems very relevant.

1. Why does this story continue to appeal to so many people?

2. Should this story have a happy ending? Explain how you see the story ending and WHY you thik it should end this way.

3. Is this story realistic? Can people truly "change" or do our personalities and behaviors remain pretty much the same throughout our lives, no mater how much we may look, speak or act differently?

Why did the Nazis Keep a Record of the Holocaust?

The events of World War II were recorded to an extent far beyond that of preceding conflicts. Events were captured in print, photographs, and moving pictures. The most chilling of all was the exhaustive documentation of the Holocaust, much of it created by the very people who committed the crimes.

Knowledge of the Holocaust stems from many sources, the most compelling of which are the eyewitness testimonies of victims. But there is another source that helps confirm the extermination's unthinkable scale, as well as the fates of individuals. That source is the accounts kept by the Nazis themselves. Seized by the liberating armies in the last days of the war, the documentation exists in various collections, but the bulk of the records have been under the care of the Red Cross for the last half-century. The files are extensive: millions upon millions of papers covering 16 miles of shelves. Why? Why would a group of people intent on murder risk putting their activities in writing? The answer may be surprisingly simple.
In the opinion of Paul Shapiro, director of Holocaust studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "They wanted to show they were getting the job done." Many accounts suggest that he may be correct.
JUST A JOB: "THE BUREAUCRACY OF THE DEVIL"
A stereotypical but fairly accurate image of the prewar German government is one of bureaucracy. Everything was documented, and paper authorizations were generated by the handful for the most mundane of tasks. This attitude extended into the war. The task of running an empire, even a despicable one, is complex, requiring extensive procedures and paper trails. like many governments, Nazi Germany employed an array of middle managers who wanted to prove their efficiency. The only way an official could show he was performing up to par was to keep records. Prisoners who were immediately executed had the least documentation, sometimes being reduced to a mere entry in the number of arrivals for the day. Individuals who stayed in the camps longer typically had more extensive records. Because of the sheer number of people involved—some 17 million in all—some startling documents survived, such as the original list of Jews transferred to safety in the factories of Oskar Schindler. Another file contains the records of Anne Frank.
WHY WORRY?
For most of the war, the Nazis showed little worry about documenting their activities. In their minds, why should they? To whom would they be accountable? After all, many thought the Third Reich would last a thousand years. In the closing months of the war, there was a slight reversal of this policy, and the commandants of some camps sought to destroy records and eliminate the remaining witnesses as the Allied forces closed in. Fortunately, they were not able to erase the record of their own atrocities. Private memoirs of the Holocaust also exist. Participants at all levels wrote letters about their experiences, and some SS guards took photographs of the camps and inmates with their personal cameras. Some of the Nazi leadership was also prone to recording daily activities; Joseph Goebbels kept a journal throughout the war, viewing it as a "substitute for the confessional." Much like Goebbels’ diary, the official records of the Holocaust have become the unintentional confession of a Nazi machine that had uncountable crimes for which to answer. The archive exists in Bad Arolsen, Germany, and was opened to the online public in late 2006. Survivors of the camps hope that its presence serves as a counterargument to those who inexplicably deny that the Holocaust ever happened, and as a reminder that humankind must never allow it to happen again.

1. Give three possible reasons that the Nazis kept a record of the Holocaust.
2. What did many Nazi leaders try to do when they understood the Germans were losing the war?
3. Give two reasons that these records are considered to be valuable resources and explain why.

POISON FOR YOUNG MINDS: NAZI EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE

Though it lasted only 12 years, the German Reich was supposed to last a thousand. Early in his political career Hitler argued that in order to survive and prosper, future generations of Nazis would need to maintain a single-minded dedication to purity and strength. As such, the Nazis imbued all areas of public education with their party's ideology. These lessons took several forms:

Children's Stories: One of the more widespread lessons taught to young children was a story called "The Poison Mushroom." A mother and her son are picking mushrooms in the forest, and the boy finds some poisonous mushrooms. The mother compares the dangerous mushrooms to the dangers of a certain land of people. The boy rightly concludes that she is speaking of the Jews. The mother is proud of her son and exhorts him to learn to identify Jews in all their dangerous guises. The story was part of a collection published by Julius Streicher, who was executed as a war criminal in 1946. Repugnant yet alluring art by "Fips" (Philip Rupprecht, a Der Sturmer staffer) is the capper.

Primers: Nazi elementary books used simple illustrations and stories of children. Many of the stories include veneration for military parades and weapons. They also portray Hitler as a great man who is kind to children who bring him gifts. In one story, a boy named Karl attends a Hitler Youth rally. He wants to march with his older brother, but is too young. After the march, a race for young children takes place. Karl wins and receives a sausage and a pretzel, which he promptly eats.

Geography: Geography lessons stressed the concept of Lebensraum ("living space"), which Nazis proclaimed would provide the German people with land and resources that had been stolen from them after the Great War. Texts emphasize not only the need for this territory, but also the Germans' historical right to it. They mention Germany's cultural and historical influence on the countries surrounding it, as well as its geographic disadvantages, such as the ease with which the country was blockaded during World War I.

Biology: In German textbooks, biology was synonymous with racial purity and strength. Girls were given rigorous instruction in the selection of a suitable mate and the proper method of nurturing the next generation of Germans. Women's magazines often ran articles advising mothers to raise strong, physically active children who eschewed the classroom for the playing field. The articles advised parents to be stern with their children since "only he who has learned to obey can lead."

Mathematics: Even the discipline traditionally least susceptible to cultural bias, mathematics, was tainted by Nazi influence. For instance, word problems asked students to calculate the amount of money wasted on handicapped citizens and the amount of ammunition a plane could carry over a certain distance to bomb an ethnic slum.

A 1937 Nazi pamphlet for teachers, The Jewish Question in Education, quotes "Munich scientist Dr. Escherich," who relates a hare-brained tale of guards at a thriving termite colony who fall for the seductive charms of "foreign insects" of a different "race." In short order, "the foreigners had murdered the queen," and destroyed the colony. The pamphlet suggests that schoolteachers encourage students to draw a parallel between this astonishing natural event and predatory Jews who threaten the Aryan gene pool.

"POISON FOR YOUNG MINDS: NAZI EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE." World War II. Comp. Allen Orsi. Lincolnwood: West Side Publishing, 2007.

1. How did Hitler use the schools to spread his ideas?

2. At what age did this "education" appear to start?

3. Identify three specific "facts" that were taught and how they supported the Nazi's ideas.

4. Would the idea of free will or independent thought have been acceptable to the Nazis? Explain your answer.

"The Sonderkommando"

In Part 4 of Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State, we hear from several Sonderkommandos about the experiences of prisoners who were forced to remove bodies out of the gas chambers and transport them to the crematoria. Lily Brett was born in Germany after World War II but grew up in Australia. Thus she did not have direct experience in the camps. As a poet, however, she chose to write a poem about the Sonderkommando.

Source: From The Auschwitz Poems by Lily Brett. Melbourne: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd, 1986. Used with permission of the author.

The Sonderkommando
those prisoners
known as
the Death Squad

merely
shuffled
death around

re-arranging
and
re-packaging
the components

they
herded
crowds
into the showers

pulled
them
out
gassed

hosed
them
to get rid of
the crap

hooked
the slippery bodies
with
thongs around the wrists

and
piled
them

into
the
elevators

for
the
ovens.

* Look at the form of the poem. Why do you think Brett chose to use such short lines and so little description? What effect does this have on the reader?

* According to the poem, what did Sonderkommandos have to do?

* What tone does Brett use to describe the work of the Sonderkommandos? What effect does this tone have on the reader?

* Why do you think the Nazis chose Jews to do this task?

"Would You Like a Star Too?"

This vignette is taken from “Hide and Seek,” Vos’s autobiographical story about a young child’s experience under Nazi occupation in Poland.

Today for the first time Rachel must go to school with a yellow star on her coat, a big yellow star, with the word Jew written in the middle of it. Thus everyone can see that she is Jewish. The Germans have ordered the wearing of the star, and Rachel finds it horrible.
All her mother did yesterday evening was sew stars on their clothing. "I see stars," Mother said, and they even had to laugh about it.
"I'll take you to the tram," says Papa. "Come on, hurry up, otherwise you'll be late for school."
They put their coats on. How big the star is. Esther's star is even bigger than Rachel's. "It looks that way because Esther has such a small body," their father explains. "That's why her star seems larger."
When they arrive at the tram stop they see many other people with stars on, grown-up people and little people. "All Jews," an old man says. "Yesterday I did not know they were Jews, although I suspected they were."
"You must hold your schoolbag under your arm as you usually do, not against your star," Father admonishes her. Rachel blushes. Father saw that she was trying to hide her star.
"It's difficult, but if you don't hide your star now, you'll get over the embarrassment more quickly. When the war is over, we'll make a huge fire and we'll throw all the stars of the whole world into it."
"Boy, will that stink!" Rachel exclaims.
"It stinks right now," Leo says. "I smelled the star when I put my coat on."
"Children, here comes the tram," Father calls.
The moment has come. For the first time Rachel will have to go on the tram with that horrible star.
"Come in!" the driver of the tram calls out to them. "It really is springtime in my tram now. All these children with yellow daffodils on their coats. I wish I could wear one."
When they are all inside, many people begin to clap, just as an audience does at the end of a play. Rachel does not understand. A man nudges her. "Bow, the clapping is for you, for your stars."
Rachel does not dare to move. What is that? Are the people clapping for that big yellow star? The children look at one another. "They are clapping for us," Leo says, and he begins to bow. "Thank you, people. Thank you very much."
A few people do not clap, but look straight ahead instead. Leo approaches one of those people. "Ma'am, would you like a star, too? Tomorrow I'll bring you one. Would you like a star, too, mister?"
"Go away, you little Jew boy," the man replies, and to the woman sitting next to him he says, "You can't cut them down to size. Not the big Jews and not the little ones, either."

Source: Hide and Seek by Ida Vos. Copyright © 1981 by Ida Vos. Excerpted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

This story is told from early in the war, before the Jewish people were being deported to the ghettoes and the camps.

We meet quite a number of people in this brief story: Rachel, her mother, her father, her sister Esther, an old man, her brother Leo, the tram driver, a man on the tram. What are the different feelings that they have about the Star and about the Jews in general?
Why might a Jewish child feel differently about having to wear the Star as opposed to an adult?

Red Sector A

The Holocaust has been the subject of many songs in mainstream culture. Often, the references to the Holocaust are not stated explicitly but depend on the listener to actually understand and consider the lyrics. Watch the following video and then read the lyrics to Red Sector A by the Canadian prog-rock band, Rush. Then, read the short piece and answer the questions.



Red Sector A:

All that we can do is just survive
All that we can do to help ourselves
Is stay alive...

Ragged lines of ragged grey
Skeletons, they shuffle away
Shouting guards and smoking guns
Will cut down the unlucky ones

I clutch the wire fence
Until my fingers bleed
A wound that will not heal-
A heart that cannot feel-
Hoping that the horror will recede
Hoping that tomorrow-We'll all be freed

Sickness to insanity
Prayer to profanity
Days and weeks and months go by
Don't feel the hunger-too weak to cry

I hear the sound of gunfire
At the prison gate
Are the liberators here-
Do I hope or do I fear?
For my father and my brother-it's too late
But I must help my mother
Stand up straight...

Are we the last ones left alive?
Are we the only human beings
To survive?...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sector_A]

Rush's 1984 album "Grace Under Pressure" included the track "Red Sector A." The song, written by drummer Neal Pert, focuses on the experience of a person struggling to survive at an unnamed prison camp. "Red Sector A" was particularly meaningful to the band's lead singer/bassist/keyboardist Geddy Lee:From "How the Holocaust rocked Rush front man Geddy Lee", Jewish News Weekly, June 25, 2004:

The seeds for the song were planted nearly 60 years ago in April 1945 when British soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Lee’s mother, Manya (now Mary) Rubenstein, was among the survivors. (His father, Morris Weinrib, was liberated from Dachau a few weeks later.) The whole album “Grace Under Pressure,” says Lee, who was born Gary Lee Weinrib, “is about being on the brink and having the courage and strength to survive.”

Though “Red Sector A,” like much of the album from which it comes, is set in a bleak, apocalyptic future, what Lee calls “the psychology” of the song comes directly from a story his mother told him about the day she was liberated.

“I once asked my mother her first thoughts upon being liberated,” Lee says during a phone conversation. “She didn’t believe [liberation] was possible. She didn’t believe that if there was a society outside the camp how they could allow this to exist, so she believed society was done in.”

1. What motivated Rush to write Red Sector A?
2. According to the lyrics, what impact did the camp have on its captives physically and mentally?
3. In the song, what hope surfaces for the camp's captives?
4. According to the final lines of the song, what are the captives left thinking and feeling after being freed?

Orders and Initiatives

Orders, rules and laws have important places in society. Most regulations exist to ensure the safety of citizens within a community and make sense from a common sense or moral point of view. We have been conditioned to follow orders, based on those laws, given by people in authority. When a police officer arrives at the scene of a crime or an accident, we follow the orders because, we assume, the situation is going to be taken care of. When a soldier is given an order from a commanding officer, those orders are normally followed without question. When the officials giving those orders have questionable motives though, can we trust the orders that they give and the laws that they make?
We learn that it was actually a small but influential group of Nazi leadership - Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich - that made the secret plans to annihilate the Jews. At the Wansee Conference in 1942, the "Final Solution" was agreed upon. The poisonous gas, Zyklon B would be used in order to exterminate large numbers of people in the gas chambers at Auschwitz and the other death camps. In order to do so, a vast number of people had to either follow orders or turn a blind eye to what was going on. Murder on such a vast scale simply could not happen unnoticed.

What are alternative actions can one take if one feels that an order is morally wrong?
What are some consequences if people do—or do not do—as they are ordered?
Professor Kissi has talked about "respecting authority but questioning information." Give an example where one could "respect authority" but "question information."

The Holocaust and Night

Elie Wiesel wrote Night to tell the world about his experiences in the Nazi death camps. While his story will be the focus of our study over the next few weeks, there are many other facets of the Holocaust that must be examined in order to understand the enormity of this crime.
In the series Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State, the evolution of one of the camps, Auschwitz is detailed. The first episode, Surprising Beginnings examines the increase in violence against all opponents of the Nazi state between early 1940 - mid 1941. Here we learn that initially, Auschwitz came into being to house political prisoners and Soviet POWs, not Jews.
There is a definite difference between the thoughts of the prisoners and those of the perpetrators. One perpetrator, for example, justifies his actions in this way: "Because my hatred towards the Jews is too great. I admit my thinking on this point is unjust. . . .But what I experienced from my earliest youth . . . what the Jews were doing to us — well that will never change. That is my unshakable conviction."
What kinds of messages about other people do we learn from our parents? How important are these messages in determining how we behave as adults? How can you know when you are a child that something you learn is wrong or misinformation?