My Year with Nike Chapter Review

 As many of you know by now, I have a young daughter who just finished kindergarten. For the first time, she has been bringing new ideas and values home. Among these was Nike. 

She came home asking if we can get her a pair of Nikes because she like the swoosh ... or because a friend had a pair. Either way, she asked. We said, "We'll see. Maybe later." Our default response, which time and her shifting interests ultimately answer for us. The pressure on her or us is mild at best. 

I cannot imagine the pressure on Rachel Cloues, a teacher whose school's 4th grade was taken over for a year by Nike. After a persistent and targeted marketing campaign, the school allowed Nike to fund and host a bunch of activities and field trips, including trips to their corporate offices in Oregon. 

The whole school was on board, except Cloues. She had misgivings about the influence of corporations on young folk and on Nike's particularly unsavory reputation for exploiting foreign workers. Still, she capitulated and didn't protest to having her class go along with all the Nike based activities. 

The impression the article gives is of a lone dissenting voice overwhelmed by a single corporation's marketing agenda and the brief histeria it caused at her school. Her worry was for how her students were a vulnerable population being exploited by a powerful company. 

Nike is, after all, one of the strongest brands I can think of. It has a decades-old foothold in the public eye and hard-core followers. It is one of the dozen or so coveted brands my students wear. This sort of following around a clothing company does make me cringe, at least a little. 

Cloues has a good point about how powerful corporations ethically behave. Where are the regulations for this? She thinks it should be left up to the schools. She calls for schools to have policies regarding corporate relationships. 

If schools have the time and resources to decide on  meaningful corporate relationship policies, then yes they should. But I think this view is neive. Individual schools, or even school districts, are already busy with mountains of tasks that often don't get the attention they need. 

To me, especially since the corporations in question are larger, international companies, this should be something for states or the federal government to decide on. Alas. 

To wrap up this post, my mother found my daughter a pair of blue Nike's at Savers for about $10. She loves them.