hools," (Molnar). Both organizations warned against unconditional acceptance of free goods but cautioned not to reject offerings outright. By 1979, half of all US teachers used materials sponsored by a wide range of organizations including banks, manufacturers, food processors, and even utility companies. Many examples of the sponsored material were filled with bias, prejudice, sexism, inaccuracies, and incomplete or outdated information. Channel 1, the popular current events program that shows twelve minutes of news and one minute of commercials, is considered by many to be an indicator of the recent expansion of commercial influence on schools. Schools with high concentrations of poor students are twice as likely to receive Channel 1 as schools serving more wealthy students, and students who watch Channel 1 are more likely to have materialistic views like, "Money is everything," (Molnar)Often, corporations use propaganda in a more subtle way. Exclusive agreements, sponsorship of programs, incentive programs, and sponsored education materials are all examples of propaganda. In an exclusive agreement, the head of a school or school district signs a contract that gives a corporation the exclusive right to promote or sell its goods or services in the school for a percentage of the profits. Such agreements rose 1,668% between 1990 and 1999. The number of corporations that sponsor school events like basketball games for the right to associate their name with the event has risen 250%. Incentive programs that provide goods or money to schools for having children collect items like soup labels or sales receipts from certain stores have increased by 83%, and corporate-sponsored materials that claim to have some kind of instructional content have increased 963%. After factoring in a few other types of media propaganda, the overall propaganda increase between 1990 and 1999 was 303% (Molnar).The USSR also pioneered some interesting prog...
