Published September 4, 2005 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune
By Aaron J. Brown
We live in a world of seasons. Summer fades to autumn. Baseball gently bows to football. And, for students and teachers, early September represents a transition from “sleeping in” to “sleeping occasionally.”
Even if you’re not involved with a school in some way, it’s hard to escape this season as a time of new beginnings. The 9-month schedule we learned when we were five just doesn’t seem to go away.
For many, back to school time now means more than just cheap notebooks and hot new fashions that vaguely resemble last year’s fashions. It means marketing these things in a way that makes people forget that they already own paper and pants.
(A side note: Has anyone seen the back to school ad for a large retailer involving a remix of the Sir Mix-A-Lot classic “Baby Got Back” to include the lyric, “I like backpacks and I cannot lie?” Note how they deftly attempted to avoid offense by removing the word “butt” from the song, but left the whip sound right where you’d expect it. What’s that about?)
I digress. In the distraction of back to school commercialization, students and teachers must not lose sight of their educational priority: fruit snack technology.
Not so long ago, fruit snacks either came in pouches or long rolls wrapped in wax paper. Now, fruit snacks need to compete for the waning attention span of today’s young people. Some snacks have gelatinous silicon-based filling that glows red when you think about Justin Timberlake. Some snacks turn your tongue different colors. Others turn your soul different colors. Soon, they will develop artificial intelligence fruit snacks that “learn” what flavor and shape you want them to be.
Mmmm, watermelon scythes!
September makes me think of fruit snacks because they wouldn’t exist were it not for the institution of school lunches. In that regard, they represent the best of American marketing. And, if the school lunch racket ever falls through, one could probably insulate a house with fruit snacks. I think they call that market versatility.
Students from elementary school all the way up to college face a daily lesson in marketing and economics on their way to the classroom. Your son or daughter is not in “third grade.” They are in “Pepsi-Cola Third Grade” where they hope to gain skills they’ll still use when they go off to “Citibank College.”
Point is, you might want to run through the basics of advertising awareness with the kid before you assume that every message they receive at school will be related to reading, writing and arithmetic.
That said, the school year also means restarting the brain. Now that I teach for a living, I’ve learned that summer can be just as mind erasing for instructors as it is for students. Granted, the new baby and house construction might explain why I forgot how to spell most English language words when I showed up for class, but that excuse is structurally similar to a student saying “dude, I forgot how to spell because my mind is full of Play Station codes right now.”
As we settle into fall routines, use this month to consider what we can start now that might bring us somewhere better in the spring. Some might ponder self-fulfillment, others a new job or special project. Take comfort in the knowledge that as good as the fruit snacks are today, something can be done to make them even better next year.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.