ABSTRACT
Children face a barrage of attention from the media, and advertisers in particular. Their spending power, and their influence on adult spending, is highly significant. This chapter explores the influences faced by children and explores how they can develop the social and emotional literacy necessary to deal with the competing pressures upon their daily lives. It also explores how children can be supported in interpreting the media images and messages around them and how children can learn to question some of the assumptions and presumptions of contemporary society and begin to develop their own worldviews. This chapter also examines how market forces operate in schools, including target setting, league tables and success criteria that exert pressure on children to ‘succeed’ according to external measures. Throughout the chapter, I question some of the assumptions underlying these and explore alternatives.
