Sunday, October 30, 2011

Advertising and Memory

Years ago while shopping in Target, I heard a little boy singing the Flintstones vitamin commercial to his mom as they walked down the vitamin aisle.  She said "We don't need vitamins," and he began to cite all the reasons why they did, directly from the commercial.  I thought it was cute, and it was--but the more sobering fact is that the advertisers had hit their target--they nailed it.  The web of connections had been made complete for this little boy.  If only it were that easy to get us to remember the important things in life....The good news is that educators can tap into this brain power: "...memory is integral to thought and ...nothing we learn can stand in isolation; we sustain new learning only to the degree we can relate it to what we already know" ("Making Connections" 24). Teaching students to hold onto what they've already learned and, incremently, add to that knowledge is crucial.  But I digress. Advertisers have taken this basic idea to a whole new level--they use tricks that sneak into our brains without our ever knowing it.  Under the level of conscious awareness are hundreds of little triggers that are set to go off when we encounter products--at Target, for instance. We are like Pavlov's dog--geared to salivate when a bell rings.  As Matthew Blakeslee says, "...the whiz kids on Madison Avenue have learned farily well how to attach psychic puppet strongs to our minds..." even though they may not have known the biological underpinnings that make them work (632). As a teacher, I sometimes wonder if I am taking full advantage of this "web of connections" in the classroom.  I feel like teachers walk a fine line between guidance and, dare I say, mind control.  Maybe it's a little bit of both.  But at any rate, we are pushed, prodded, and forcefully encouraged to participate in this capitalist society. The things that get in under the wire are the most potent, and possibly have the most potential for good (or bad) simply because we are not consciously aware of them. We think that it is entirely our own idea to buy those Flintstone vitamins, right?

No comments: