You say:

“If the principle of marketing in schools is OK for Oxfam, it’s OK for brands.”

On what basis?

Oxfam’s aim in schools is two fold - firstly to educate and make young people grasp the concept of a wider, and in some cases, developing world. Secondly there is also the more subtle aim of trying to persuade schools to fundraise on their behalf.

Both are entirely laudable. I know, I used to work with schools, fundraising while with VSO overseas. It dovetailed well with students and helped them put their own lives in perspective set against the lives of others in less well off communities overseas.

How can you argue that if Oxfam does this it is also okay to push make up (which was the example given in the original article)? How exactly are the two comparable?

As Oxfam says on its own website:

“Oxfam Education offers a huge range of ideas, resources and support for developing the global dimension in the classroom and the whole school. All of the resources here support Education for Global Citizenship – education that helps pupils understand their world and make a positive difference in it.”

It’s not exactly the same as giving out freebies with the eventual aim of flogging Gatorade or eyeshadow is it?

Some good points but I fundamentally disagree with the idea that allowing marketers into schools somehow “protects” kids by exposing them to messages and encouraging them to develop critical awareness.

There should be space in my daughter’s life where marketing messages simply aren’t an issue - where nobody is bombarding you with expensively designed images that are created with the sole intention of persuading kids that buying a particular branded object or experience somehow makes a person cooler, better or happier.

All this process does is say “cool” kids know this marketing message, and if you want to be cool, you should buy into it too. Kids are exposed to that in so many places that I’d argue they already have plenty of opportunities to learn about “critical awareness”. Perhaps they’d learn more simply by the absence of marketing messages?

Certainly, I’d pull my kid out of any school that did this in a heartbeat.