Target and Our Society: Rethinking Schools

    One of the simple pleasures in my life is to wake up early on a Saturday morning and head to Target. I aim to be one of the first customers there to wander the empty store with an extra-large cup of Dunkin' to peruse the aisles in peace. Not that I do a tremendous amount of shopping. I mainly pick up household items for the week.  I find it enjoyable to see what is being sold and find the displays enjoyable to take in.  I am not alone. It seems like Target has a pulse on the average American working family, what their needs are, and their spending habits. It's an affordable place to shop. If you wait long enough even the pricer stuff gets marked down and placed on secluded endcaps at the back of the store. When I look at Target displays and advertisements I feel comfortable. I  imagine that Target's marketing team has constructed this vision for their customer base who are in search of inexpensive and generic items for their yard parties, living rooms, and the pantry.  However, I am not a shopper. I was raised by parents who grew up during the Great Depression. Growing up, if it wasn't needed it was not bought. I enjoy looking at an object on a Target shelf, noting its cleverness or its attractiveness, even imagining, like the Target marketing executives hope that I will, the ways that this product might make my life better. But then I put it down because I think if I bought it would I really use it or where would I put it? Would this be a pain to clean? Would it be wrecked or used up in a week? I get the allure of Target, but I can resist overspending. 

    However, my age is showing when I talk about my Depression-era raised parents. For all the good it does for my bank account not to be a spender, because I was raised with these values, I did not impart these ideals to my children to the best of my ability as I feel that they are more easily manipulated by our consumption-driven society. I like to think that because I model being frugal my children will have the same values about money but society today but, with social media constantly sending them messaging on an Instagram feed about what they need and what they should buy, the challenge is overwhelming. 

    I get that companies want to lure you in with advertising and clever marketing to get you to spend money. However, I was reminded about how insidious this process was and the impact that it has on the youth of today after reading the selection from the Rethinking Schools Text (13), "The Library That Target Built" by Rachel Cloues. Cloues is a school library teacher in San Francisco. She relates how the two schools that she services, despite having a strict anti-branding policy, "won" a Target library makeover. It was not a coincidence that a Target store was opening up in the vicinity. Cloues notes that the guidelines for not having any Target branding in either library were respected by Target but as she dryly notes, "not that the students weren't branded (anyway)". If corporations keep giving school gifts then how much control do these corporations have over our children's minds in order to manipulate them to them believing that their worth is connected to where they go shopping? In this 2015 Fortune.com article, it reveals that the millennial generation is just as frugal as those who were raised in the depression era. Perhaps that is why companies are pushing harder to indoctrinate today's generation of children into identifying with a brand, a store, or a lifestyle at an earlier age.

    To kick off the opening of the school's newly redecorated library, Target hosted an outdoor "reading assembly" complete with two guest NASCAR drivers in a bright red car covered with bull's eyes. Children posed for pictures with the drivers and the car. Parents were given free groceries in bright red Target bags. The children were sent home with bags of free books covered with Target stickers. Children were overheard begging their parents to take them to Target. The author then ponders, "was this a makeover or a takeover"?

    Cloues only received a two hundred dollar budget to buy books of her choosing for her libraries. The rest of the books donated by Target were chosen by Target. None of the books Target donated reflected the home languages or cultures of the predominant surrounding Latino community that represented the school. In addition, the books donated were of poor quality and were not award-winning children's literature. The books Target donated for the parent section of the library highlighted the biographies of white entrepreneurs. If Target is picking the books that school children and their families read are they picking the curriculum and thus deciding what is of value to children? It's like a Trojan horse is invading our schools. And Target is not the only company doing this. As an adult, you understand how society is inundated with marketing images and how to ignore them but now the schools have been infiltrated and this means more guidance needs to be given to our students and children about marketing and consumption of goods.  People do make judgments about where you shop and the items you possess. There is an ideology to it and this ideology starts at a young age. The name of the store and where you like to shop dictates your identity.

    The other day my neighbor asked me where I bought my hanging floral baskets. It was hard not to giggle when I saw the look of distress on his face when I told him that I bought them at Job Lot. "Job Lot sells flowers?" he said with a note of concern in his voice. "Oh yes", I told him, "I saw their outdoor garden display after leaving Target a few weeks ago and just had to pick them up".