Gunter, Oates and Blades
(2004), state that the purpose of an advertisement, is to portray a message or
brand in a certain way, with careful consideration towards the consumers needs
and desires. Gunter et al (2004) further explains this can have negative
effects on children, including low self-esteem due to unrealistic role models,
desires of the latest gadgets, which can cause pressure on the children and
parents to keep up to date in society.
In contrast Benaji
(2010), believes advertisement can have a positive effect on children. He
explains that if children have an understanding of the purpose and function of
advertisements, then this can aid in their own writing. I have seen evidence
for this, as on my school experience the children made their own vehicles in a
design and technology lesson, and then had to produce an advertisement in the
literacy lessons in order to sell their product. This allowed cross-curricular
links to enforce the purpose of advertising, and the literacy lessons acted as
a tool for educating children on the features of persuasive language.
In reflection, I
understand there are positive and negative effects of advertisement on
children. However, based on my own experience and reading, I feel that the positive
effects out-weigh the negatives. This is because children can learn to be
critical of advertisements from a young age, rather than being sheltered
throughout childhood and then bombarded with the effects of the media in
adulthood, where they may feel inadequately prepared, and become easily
influenced.
Bibliography
Banaji, S. (2010) ‘Analysing
Advertisements in the Classroom’ in Bazelgette, C. (Ed) Teaching Media in
Primary Schools London: Sage.
Gunter,
B. Oates, C. & Blades, M. (2005) Advertising
to Children on TV. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
I agree with you, that the positives of teaching advertising in schools out-weigh the negatives. It will enable children to be able to independantly unpick an advert and weigh-up whether the product is a need or want. However, there may be a concern that if these skills are not taught properly, the negative reasons to teach advertising could then unintentionally enter into the classroom and diminish the positives, therefore rendering the objective of teaching advertising in schools obselete.
ReplyDeleteI found your own experience really interesting and how advertisements were introduced in a context for children's own products they had made.
ReplyDeleteI agree that teaching advertisments in the classroom can encourage critical thinking and give children the knowledge to make justified decisions.
However from reading I found many teachers themselves hold negative views about advertisments for children and its use in the classroom. It would be interesting to find out if there are any requirements to teach children about advertisments? As if not it is likely those teachers with apprehensions will exlude it from their classrooms.
I agree with both of your points that the teaching of advertising can become unclear, and perhaps focus too much on irrelevant issues, that would draw away from the positive views that children could potentially learn. Therefore, this raises the question that should there be clear guidelines on what to teach children, about such a touchy subject as advertisement? I agree with you Jessica that teachers may be avoiding the subject because they are unsure as to what is appropriate and in fact beneficial for the children to learn. This suggests that the issue of children being consumers of advertisement is not going to change in a positive way, unless teachers are given clear guidelines on what they should teach for this subject.
ReplyDeleteBefore last week’s lesson of creating an advertisement with children, I had concerns of teaching advertisement with children due to finding appropriate content. Last week’s lesson allowed me to see how teachers can tie in curriculum subjects to use as the content for adverts. This improved my confidence when teaching due to knowing the content was suitable.
ReplyDeleteFrom reading your blog, it has influenced me to use advertisement as a cross curricular topic, as it would provide appropriate content and would gain more time for the editing process.
How would you address the issue of finding suitable content?
You have raised a valuable point that I have read about, in order to further my own understanding. As a result, I have come to the conclusion that the teacher can focus on the topics in the curriculum. This will enable the teacher to cover content that needs to be addressed, and therefore will feel less pressured about waisting time on issues that are not assessed. Examples of how this can be achieved were shown in our experience at Shirley Warren Primary School, when the teacher provided us with examples of how every subject can be presented through a technological based end product, which is great for concluding a topic and encouraging children to value their work.
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