From time to time I try to bring together the issues of branding and education in various ways. This review looks at a book that attempts the same project, though in a much more thorough fashion. The author's snippy personal attacks notwithstanding, the article is a fairly good account of many of the issues underlying the problem of creating personal identity through brand-identification. One paragraph stands out: "the most persuasive arguments in the book are the sections on corporate-sponsored schools, horrifying institutions where students spend English class coming up with ad slogans and get disciplined for selling juice instead of Coke at bake sales. If the author had limited herself to an exposition of this subject rather than trying to take in the whole landscape of brands and teens in America in 200-odd pages, she might have produced a more substantive—though perhaps less marketable—book." Of course, the whole point just is that the issue of brands in education is part of the wider picture.
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