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If, from the end of the 19th century, any form of commercial\u00a0communication was excluded from the perimeter of French schools, certain\u00a0school marketing practices<\/a>\u00a0multiplied over the 20th\u00a0century\u00a0,\u00a0until being legalized at the beginning of the 21st\u00a0century<\/sup>\u00a0. .<\/p>\n The Official Bulletin of National Education of April 5, 2001 established a\u00a0Code of good conduct for business intervention in schools<\/em><\/a>\u00a0, noting that “secondary schools, but also primary schools, are increasingly establishing frequent contacts and exchanges with their economic, cultural and social environment\u201d.<\/p>\n Advertising campaigns in schools are still prohibited today.\u00a0Nevertheless, the ministerial text authorizes certain forms of\u00a0collaboration between companies and schools<\/a>\u00a0provided that they serve educational objectives.\u00a0They must :<\/p>\n “either be part of school programs or be linked to education (culture, civics, health, etc.), or favor a technical contribution (in particular for the production of multimedia products), or finally correspond to a specific action ( commemoration, local action)\u201d.<\/em> However, if companies use this bias to enhance their image, can’t teachers and students also rely on these sponsored kits to deconstruct and understand the underlying market logic?<\/p>\n Ready to use, free and easily accessible, the educational kits produced on behalf of agri-food brands and sectors have the objective of\u00a0educating about food<\/a>\u00a0and nutrition through a variety of materials: slide shows, games, booklets, coloring pages, cards\u2026<\/p>\n The use of these tools has been encouraged in recent decades by the introduction of \u201ceducation for\u201d.\u00a0These attribute to schools not only the teaching of traditional disciplinary content (mathematics, English, history, etc.), but also the transmission of transversal knowledge and skills necessary for responsible and reflective attitudes concerning, among other things,\u00a0sustainable development<\/a>\u00a0,\u00a0health<\/a>\u00a0, the\u00a0arts<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0food<\/a>\u00a0.<\/p>\n The proliferation of educational kits sponsored by economic actors therefore occurs in a context where the school is pushed to open up more to the world around it.<\/p>\n These kits rely on entertaining activities: cartoons, reading a story, riddles, puzzles, board games… At the same time, in their presentation, authoritative speeches try to reassure adults, parents and teachers about the reliability of knowledge. disseminated, by referring to scientific findings or the opinion of nutrition experts or ministerial programs.<\/p>\n In addition, some kits highlight the legitimization of government bodies by affixing labels or public logos.\u00a0Thus, the discourse of brands and\u00a0agri-food sectors<\/a>\u00a0seems to erase controversies and disagreements around children’s food and food advertising and to harmonize the interests of the various actors involved.<\/p>\n It should be remembered in particular that the introduction of\u00a0restrictive measures in the area of \u200b\u200bfood advertising<\/a>\u00a0has been the subject of a long controversy between the National Association of Agri-Food Industries (Ania), the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Culture and of Communication, the Higher Audiovisual Council (CSA), professionals from television channels, advertising agencies, consumer associations, learned societies.\u00a0This controversy led in 2016 to the promulgation of a\u00a0law prohibiting commercial advertising<\/a>\u00a0in the programs of national television services intended primarily for children under the age of twelve.<\/p>\n The State grants teachers absolute freedom in choosing whether or not to use the kits offered by private companies.\u00a0They are the ones who must check the educational quality.\u00a0In particular, the Ministry of National Education has\u00a0entrusted school teachers<\/a>\u00a0and establishment managers with the task of “monitoring the messages not apparent on first reading, likely to be contained in these educational documents, which represent for the company a vector advertising\u201d.<\/p>\n The \u201cCode of Good Conduct for Business Interventions in Schools\u201d authorizes the use of educational resources produced by economic actors only if the sponsorship and investment of businesses are dictated by philanthropic purposes.\u00a0However, the ministry does not require these actions to be anonymous.<\/p>\n Companies are therefore authorized to display their partner status on the tools made available.\u00a0Discreetly printed, the logos thus help to identify the brands, institutes, foundations backed by multinational agrifood companies that produced the kit.\u00a0Thus the explicitly raised educational discourse and the implicit advertising discourse intertwine in a subtle way.<\/p>\n In a context of chronic budgetary restrictions, these educational kits constitute a \u201cgift appreciated\u201d by teachers constantly looking for new media to animate their sessions.<\/p>\n The teachers interviewed as part of a\u00a0survey on food education in underprivileged neighborhoods in the city of Naples<\/a>\u00a0do not seem to attach much importance to the commercial purposes of the materials, rather seen as “useful teaching tools” as “attractive and particularly effective”.<\/p>\n Since the end of the 1990s, several social movements have called into question the various forms of commercial mediation in the school environment.\u00a0Associations have accused the\u00a0marketing actions carried out by the agri-food industry<\/a>\u00a0in schools of aggravating problems of different kinds: unhealthy eating habits, overweight and obesity, deterioration of democratic and civic values, etc.<\/p>\n The anti-advertising associations have thus set up a vast repertoire of actions of denunciation and opposition.\u00a0Their mobilizations aimed in particular to empower the various actors involved in school feeding, in this case parents and teachers, so that they become aware of the role they can play not only in the circulation of knowledge and food standards at school, but also in the fight against market disorders.<\/p>\n But the relationship between business strategies and school goals is always potentially complex and dialectical.\u00a0Clearly, the presence in primary schools of promotional educational content does not necessarily function as a Trojan horse of market culture.<\/p>\n It is precisely in the space of negotiation of meaning between promotional aims and interpretative decoding that there are margins for an educational intervention.\u00a0This means that even where market logic is incorporated into the school environment, the conditions for setting up a critical education in advertising do not disappear.\u00a0Research conducted in the United States, a country where the school system appears to be largely dominated by private companies, shows that the\u00a0strategic philanthropy of brands<\/a>\u00a0, the impact of sponsored educational materials and the reasons that push companies to produce educational kits can be questioned in the classroom.<\/p>\n If it is therefore true that “commodification and economic partnerships with school promote the materialism of consumption, hinder critical activity and negatively alter what it means to be a citizen”, it is also true that\u00a0“the schools can benefit from partnerships with economic actors by exploiting them as an object of analysis for critical consumption and citizenship\u201d<\/a>\u00a0.<\/p>\n
\nUnder these conditions, “partnerships” with businesses – i.e. actions “implemented in the form of support, sponsorship, awareness-raising, promotion, various aid or supply educational \u201ckits\u201d \u2013 are therefore allowed.<\/p>\nAttractive media<\/strong><\/h4>\n
The choice of teachers<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Contrasting reactions<\/strong><\/h4>\n