The Making of a Medley
Newsstand: November 23, 2009
Transit City and Transit Cities
The Daily Photoist: November 23, 2009
Toronto board allows use of Future Shop colours in computer labs (Toronto Star): "After an hour of arguing over what strings corporate donors should be free to attach to their gifts, trustees voted 13 to 5 last night to allow the software retailer to provide $100,000 for computer labs for two Toronto high schools to be chosen within seven kilometres of a Future Shop store and be painted in Future Shop colours." [Previous coverage on Torontoist: Back to the Future Shop.]
Hands off: Cellphone driving ban approved (Toronto Star): "Ontario motorists will likely have until fall before it becomes illegal to use hand-held cellphones and other electronic devices like BlackBerrys and global positioning systems while at the wheel. The Legislature unanimously passed the government's law against 'distracted driving' yesterday but it will take several months before associated regulations are drawn up and a public education campaign launched, said Transportation Minister Jim Bradley. Fines will be up to $500, which drivers can avoid by using a cellphone headset and voice dialing." [More from the Sun.]
Business group meets with NHL to discuss second Toronto team (Globe and Mail): "A group of business people wants to bring a second team to the Greater Toronto Area, and the National Hockey League took the group seriously enough to grant it an audience. The unidentified group met with NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly in downtown Toronto last week, according to sources. The group proposes to build an arena at the intersection of Highways 427 and 7 in Vaughan, Ont., on land north of Pearson International Airport that's owned by businessman Victor De Zen."
Credit card regulations coming, Flaherty says (CTV): "With economists worried about the threat of massive amounts of credit card defaults, the Canadian government announced they are looking into new regulations to protect consumers. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty made the announcement Wednesday but did not specify the exact regulations, such as interest rate limits, the government is considering."
Retired auto workers to take to Queen's Park to safeguard pensions (Canadian Press): "Thousands of retired auto workers will descend on Queen's Park today to demand pension protection for seniors. Canadian Auto Workers president Ken Lewenza says the pensioners want the government to understand that in an economic crisis, it can't be selective about who its supports. He says the pension crisis goes beyond just the auto workers and affects all Canadians."
Don Valley Parkway closed on weekend (CBC): "Get ready for a big-time traffic headache in Toronto this weekend. The city's transportation department says the Don Valley Parkway will be closed Saturday and Sunday for spring maintenance. 'This is important work that needs to be done to maintain safe travel conditions,' said Gary Welsh, general manager of the city's transportation services, in a news release. [...] The heavily used artery connecting Highway 401 with the Gardiner Expressway will be closed in both directions from Saturday at 2 a.m. to Monday at 5 a.m."
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Unless schools decide to go a route of free software, linux and build the hardware themselves, there is absolutely no way to avoid some kind of brand exposure in a computer lab. Microsoft, Dell, HP, Google, not to mention all the ads on the internet will already be in that classroom.
Of all the places to be worried about ad creep, this isn't one. The nature of this classroom/lab is necessarily one where brands will be all over the place, just as an autobody shop class couldn't avoid Ford or Toyota logos, etc.
Kudos to Future Shop for helping to chip in to make computer education better at these schools. They should get a little something out of the deal and paint colours are about the least you could ask for.
I could not disagree more. It's not about protecting children from brands, it's about protecting them from branding: it's about saying to a corporation, no, you may not pay us a paltry sum in order to market to students while they're captive in a classroom.
A donation is when money is given to an entity, and that entity may recognize the donor in a form of that entity's choosing (usually a plaque or something similar). Advertising is when money is paid for the specific, explicit purpose of placing a brand in a particular context where it would not otherwise appear. Torontoist wouldn't run advertorials just because we already have banner ads.
(And, for the record, the idea of moving to Linux was indeed brought up.)
I hear there is a CIBC claret room at York. I wonder how many students have been exposed to marketing there? What do you think the risks are? Could they contaminate others? Should I be alarmed? Is there a vaccine??
York is covered in branding. I had a class last year in a lecture room called "Proctor and Gamble", I've seen a student concert in the "Tribute Communities Recital Hall" and there's a good swath of the Accolade East building featuring prominent CIBC logos. Not to mention being perpetually accosted by Mastercard reps hawking York-themed credit cards, reading Zoom Media ads on the inside of bathroom stalls, and drinking only Pepsi Co. products on campus (including the terribly-packaged Dole juices and heinously unhealthy Sobe syrups).
Although I feel a distinct distaste at the persistent reminders that my school has sold me out to the highest bidder (to pay for buildings it had to build to house the students it had to accept to pay for buildings), I have to admit that it does not particularly bother me. My academic experience has been so embarrassingly lukewarm that being advertised to is really the least of my concerns.
Anyway, keeping ads out of high schools won't make much difference when they aren't taught critical thinking.
exactly! Isn't expecting brand awareness for a donation called sponsorship?
I've also got to disagree, Ken. There's a difference between a branded item that's in a school and a branded school. When we give something over to a brand we're saying that it's an object suitable for commercial development, that it is a market good. Computers and operating systems are commercial goods, and while in an ideal world the school might be able to supply non-commercial versions thereof our understanding of what a computer is isn't fundamentally altered by its being branded. By contrast, our conception of what a school is changes if we start to let corporations come in and decide what goes on the walls. (The claim that paint colours are "the least you could ask for" is belied by the fact that Future Shop is asking for them. It knows that paint colours do actually matter, and if kids feel on some level, even if the effect is subtle, that computer class is like hanging out at the mall, the nature of their experience changes.)
Hamutal, Jonathan: I don't know what you two are talking about. I received only the finest education in my youth at the Best Buy Boys' Academy, before graduating and moving on to Canadian Tire High School.
Canadian Tire High School? You mean Ryerson's business building?
This is a perfect example of why we need Torontoist vs. Torontoist back as a regular feature.
I certainly understand everyone's arguement about what we should be allowed to brand and the things that should be off-limits from branding. Nor will I make the cheap (however true) argument that "schools need the money" because I believe that this sort of thing should and would be allowed even if our schools were rolling in cash.
The whole notion of keeping brands out of schools is obviously farcical, as we all recognize: everything in a school from the clothing kids wear to the pencils they use and clocks they stare at intently, waiting for the lunch bell to ring, has the name of some brand on it.
The question is, are our classrooms one more thing we are willing to auction off, like we have done with our baseball stadiums, movie houses, cultural events and even garbage cans, to the highest bidder in order to raise a few dollars? I do see why people want to draw the line here, but this particular quid pro quo makes perfect sense to me.
What would be great is more discussion of branding in the schools, what it means and why companies do it. Our kids go through school paying for the right to be billboards for Nike and GAP, and even though this is something they deal with everday, there is never any discussion about it. Schools themselves are brands. They all have nice logos and merchandise ready for sale. School Pride, too, is a marketing gimmick.
A computer room painted red and grey and full of new computers would be great, especially if there was some discussion to go along with it, about why the room was painted the way it was and what the company hopes to achieve.
Kids can't be protected from brands or branding. The horse is out of the barn. Best thing to do is accept it, discuss it, and take the offer of free gear that will benefit all who use it... as well as those who provide it.
>Unless schools decide to go a route of free software, linux and build the hardware themselves, there is absolutely no way to avoid some kind of brand exposure in a computer lab.
What would be wrong with that? If I was teaching I would def want to teach in a linux/unix environment as my students would have a greater understanding of the fundamentals of computing AND get a chance to educate themselves on openEconomics in the tech industry. Seems like a win/win situation to me.
I feel that students today are also negatively influenced by the Dixon Ticonderoga brand of pencils and McGraw Hill Ryerson mathematics texts. Therefore I propose that we remove all naming conventions from the educational system such as brands of supplies, names of authors on books and texts and even the names of schools to prevent further bias and influence of the young minds of the future.
Would the opinion be different if this were Microsoft giving away free computers loaded with Windows? Keeping in mind that the Windows interface is heavily branded.
I was thinking about that earlier—I think the sentiment is different, isn't it? At least for me. Future Shop is only giving these labs to schools because the schools are within a distance that Future Shop deems acceptable from a Future Shop store, and they're also asking for a whole room in a building to be repainted so that it matches the company colours. The transparency with which the students are being targeted as potential customers, in a school, is pretty blatant.
I honestly don't think I'd mind as much if Future Shop was donating computers in exchange for some other acknowledgment that those computers were from Future Shop (even, perhaps, in some way naming that room after it? though naming a room after a company in a high school is pretty different from doing it in a university). It'd at least be better than forcing schools to make a whole room into a miniature store.
Which is where Microsoft—a company with a way, way better record of philanthropy than Future Shop anyway—comes in: giving away free computers that run on Windows seems to me a lot less heinous than painting a whole room at a school in a company colours. Branding the computers seems to me a way better outcome than branding a whole school...
yea I think you might be right. Although by the same token it scares me as much that my children may want to use windows only lol
Kids bringing guns into school? Cops patrolling the hallways?
Non-ISSUES!
What's really important is the colour of the walls of the computer lab.
This is a joke.