by Lucinda Marshall

As any parent will tell you, the only school prep that counts is the late summer quest for cool -- cool shoes, cool clothes, and for lack of a better technical term, cool stuff. Case in point, the ruler that folds into one-inch increments which caught my son's eye when we recently went scavenging for the items on his school supply list. It of course goes without saying that no child is going to succeed academically if you buy the wrong jeans or sneakers. There's nothing new about children wanting to fit in, be cool, be accepted. But the amount of gear necessary to accomplish this has skyrocketed in recent years as more and more advertising is geared at our children. What is particularly disturbing is how much of the sales pitch takes place in the schools themselves....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Marshall0812.htm