March 29, 2005

Imagineer That! I've heard the debate about corporate-sponsored vending machines and such in public schools, now it seems those funny folks at Disney are sending imagineers to schools in the US. Gee, what's wrong with making monkey sounds!?

Don't miss Give Miranda a Manicureand all the other fun Lizzie McGuire games [Flash]. Aaah, now that's creativity!

  • I hear about this, and I just get depressed. The more cash-starved the schools are, the more they're going to turn to corporate entities to make up the difference. And what's the government doing? They're finding new and more creative ways to keep money AWAY from the schools. "No Child Left Behind" is a sick joke. It encourages schools to set unreasonably high goals, and failing to meet them means impossible financial hurdles get thrown in front of them. Intentional or no, the program is succeeding in little except forcibly driving our schools towards privatization, whether we like it or not. Hell, perhaps we should be thankful that Disney's intrusion is so benign. They could be sponsoring "classes" which are pure propaganda instead of just making the kids jump around.
  • Ouch. Not even money toward the school? It hurts when we see not that we'll sell out, but for how little. The problem I would have said -- before this particular instance -- is the technofix. Endlessly upgrading computers which few to no schools can afford, often so that materials that would have been on an overhead projector are shown on monitors instead. We have enough problems keeping modern textbooks (not to mention uncensored ones) in the classroom. Clever though. I too have positive feelings toward certain businesses that I've known since childhood -- as bizarre as that may sound. Radio Shack, for instance, as the electronics underdog. Consumers Distributing before it went under. Look at Coke. People collect its advertising for godsake.
  • If they installed Disney condom machines in the schools. Everyone would be fucking goofy. (thank you folks, thank you, I'll be playing the Candlelight Dinner Playhouse in Summit Illinois April 17 - 24)
  • Wtihout Imagineers could we even imagine funding schools instead of wars? /bitter old lady rant
  • If I were the parent of a kid at the school in that second article, I think I'd be sending the principal a photoshop of me cutting the head off of Mickey Mouse. Take a note, principal numbnuts: educate my children, and don't try and indoctrinate them into wanting ugly merchandise.
  • Damn, stuff like this makes me very glad that my middle and high school principal worked very hard to keep things like this out of school, despite parent presures.
  • Love the caveat at the bottom of the Disney site-- "Anything you send to us or do here could end up on TV -- on Disney Channel!" Amazing how something can simultaneously sound like a threat and an opportunity.