ABSTRACT
From the two sets of three colorful Amoco-branded wall posters to the Amoco-branded curriculum box to the Amoco ads in the videos themselves, Amoco’s iMPACT middle school science curriculum provides this massive multinational oil company with what advertisers refer to as multiple “impressions” or viewing of the brand logo.2 The curriculum is clearly designed to promote and advertise Amoco to a “captive audience” in public schools. Brightly mottled posters show Sesame Street-style cartoon characters riding roller coasters to learn physics, a lone cartoon diver encountering a gigantic sea monster to learn biology, and an ominous black mountain exploding with molten magma. These cartoons, with more rainbow-colors than an oil slick, include scientific labels with arrows reminding kids that all of this fun is educational. Amoco stamps its corporate logo on fun and excitement, curiosity and exploration, education, nature, science, and work. By rendering its red, white, and blue logo visible in school classrooms, Amoco appears as a “responsible corporate citizen” supporting beleaguered public schools with its corporate philanthropy. Not only does the corporate sector defund the public sector by evading its
Kenneth J.Saltman is an assistant professor in cultural foundation at DePaul University. He is the author of Collateral Damage: Corporatizing Public Schools-A Threat to Democracy (Rowman and Little Field, 2001) and co-author of Strangelove: Or How We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Market (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).Robin Truth Goodman is an assistant professor in the department of English at Florida State University. She is the author of Infertilities: Exploring Fictions of Barren Bodies (University of Minnesota Press, 2000) and co-author of Strangelove: Or How We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Market (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).
