Is Teaching Marketing to Kids?

I was catching up on my RSS subscriptions today, and I came across a blog by Clarence Fisher from Remote Access entitled "Is Teaching Marketing to Kids?" At first, I didn't quite understand what Fisher was getting at, but then I realized he was using technology related analogies to decipher what our teaching really entails. In the post, Fisher questions his fellow readers about how they are reaching their students' wants and needs. In a sense, teaching is like marketing.....the good kind of marketing. Great marketing is when a company can "recommend things that you might like based on your history with them, are helpful and there when you need them, back up a product with service and stay out of the way when you don't need them, and know that if they are doing a good enough job creating a product or a service that is high quality and useful, you will come back."So, Fisher questions...Isn't that what we do with our students? Are we sitting down and analyzing our students' wants and needs? Do we customize instruction to meet their personal experiences?

In my opinion, the answer should be YES. After all, isn't that what we call differentiated instruction? Without authentic, personal attachments to the content, students get lost in the material. And, as Fisher compares...."we might just be spamming the kids with useless information that they will delete as 'junk' later." (Just as we do with spam emails) In a sense, teaching is exactly like marketing. However, it's the type of marketing everyone is looking for....personalized, reliable, and efficient.

Are you marketing for your kids? If so, how do you "market" in your classroom?
Comments please....