Last Post...

Today I listened to CLIP 36 and 37 and they both showed so much about the dynamic power that children have in their world. In the first one, students were working together as an artist, a business manager and a consultant. They were doing things like conducting surveys about student interest in drawing and what kinds of drawing they were interested in. They also involved math into this by having sale prices for their drawings as well as figuring in tax. This was all done in school, but outside of the normal curriculum. Students were able to express their differences and show their strengths in different areas. The business manager was able to sell the drawings by convincing the buyer that they wanted one as well as being able to do the math to figure in tax. The consultant also conducted surveys so that he could advise the artist about what students were interested in and what kinds of drawings that they would buy. The artist also got to use his skill and be able to charge for it as well as working with others for the whole process to be successful. Many students do not take this much initiative to try and sell drawings through a whole carefully planned and thought out business system.
Children do also have power over their parent’s purchases. Toy packaging is designed for children to see it and immediately want one. In designing Pokemon they found their demographic. After all the years it has been on the air it has still stayed popular. Many other shows come and go so quickly if they are not as able to capitalize on the children’s interests and make a profit. In using food as well as toys children see them everywhere. And being on food makes them that much more prevalent and make the children’s desire for them greater. Most children don’t even know about how the market manipulates them and their desires into their own profit. Their marketing phrase of “Gotta Catch Em All” is genius because children do want them all. And very few of them realize why this all is. In this clip one of the students had his moment of realization where he saw how the market has been targeting him to collecting. But it did not seem like it bothered him very much to realize how much be was being used in their plans for generating profit.