• Due to ongoing issues caused by Search, it has been temporarily disabled
  • Please excuse the mess, we're moving the furniture and restructuring the forum categories
  • You may need to edit your signatures.

    When we moved to Xenfora some of the signature options didn't come over. In the old software signatures were limited by a character limit, on Xenfora there are more options and there is a character number and number of lines limit. I've set maximum number of lines to 4 and unlimited characters.

Product placement in textbooks?

QuarkChild

Critical Thinker
Joined
Nov 19, 2002
Messages
354
I was writing homework solutions this evening for a class that I'm TAing for, and one of the problems mentioned a Rolex watch by name. It went something like, "An astronaut traveling in a spaceship going .9c is wearing a Rolex watch. If his colleagues on Earth measure his transit time to be 12 hours, what time does he read on his Rolex watch?"

Were the Rolex people paying off the textbook publishers, or is this standard practice? I've never read anything like it before.

If I was the professor, I would have refused to assign that particular problem. (He had 30 or 40 possible problems to choose from, so he needn't have chosen that particular one.)

Any thoughts on this? Maybe I'm overreacting, as usual.
 
Here's a few things I've noticed from some of the textbooks I've seen around the school I work at:

The "Health" book is littered with cliffnotes. Each cliffnote looks a little like "*If you would like to learn more about the lymphatic system, see http://www.OutOfDateReference.com/files/1996/page/DontWasteYourTime.html".

From an Algebra book:
"You want to go to Disney World. A family of 5 buys a 3-day pass for US$172.05..."

From my own classroom, from the "Intro to Philosophy" books, there are many usual references to specific products such as Smuckers Jam, Compaq Computers, Marlboro Cigarrettes, McDonalds, etc.

Somehow, the authors of book must have thought the kids would get something more out of the material they cited specific and familiar products. Or perhaps, its a subliminal form of advertising.
Feeling thirsty, have Diet Pepsi.
If these large corporate people are targeting kids, what other vile sadistic message could our children be adopting through the fine art of subconscious suggestion.
 
I like my 1947 Rolex a lot. I wouldn't mind reading about Rolexes in any book.
 
Would it make a difference if it was a $9 Timex? OR a Sundial 9000? I guess you are squawking at the possible commercialism. That must have occured in the last 20 years if that is what it is. Could it be the author is just trying to personalize or add pizazz to the word problem?

p.s. Sorry I missed your call tonight.
 
QuarkDad said:
Would it make a difference if it was a $9 Timex? OR a Sundial 9000? I guess you are squawking at the possible commercialism.
I am partly reacting to the commercialism and partly to the elitism. Regardless of whether it was a Rolex or a Timex, it just makes me uneasy to see a brand identified.

In this case, using a status symbol made a particularly loathsome impression. Can there be that many college students who wear Rolex watches?

I realize that bringing up these kinds of issues makes me come across in some instances as whiny and self-righteous, so let me add that I support the right of the authors of such textbooks to phrase their questions however they wish. I am not suggesting that the practice ought to be stopped, but merely expressing my personal distaste for it.

Could it be the author is just trying to personalize or add pizazz to the word problem?
Sure, but in this case I don't think it worked. I found it distracting because the reference was so artificial.

I make a habit of paying attention to the manner in which textbook problems are phrased because often one can see a social agenda behind the text (even in a college physics textbook.) For example, there is usually an equal number of female and male subjects in the problems, and the illustrations alternate showing male and female bodies. I suspect this is for purposes of political correctness. It's interesting to see how far the PC goes--it extends, hesitantly, into racial diversity (some people are shown with darker skin or vaguely Asian features, or given typically Black names), but not as far as showing people with disabilities.
 
I still remember from my early math years, the some textbooks would mention coke or pepsi, but there would usually be equal treatment of both companies in the book. Nowadays, our highschool math books are written by a teacher in saskatoon, so they contain mostly local companies and locations.
 
Hmm, yeah, what's wrong with just saying 'cola' or 'watch' or 'building'. Saves space. Adding rolex or some other name is twice the space used and ink, and is just unnecessary.

The kid can use his/her imagination of what kind of watch or cola or whatever they think it is of when they see the words.

It's like the word association game. When I say 'building', what kind of picture or whatever comes to mind first? When I see the words restaurant, flower, or bread I get a mental picture of the object that is familiar to me.

Does that make sense?
 
Back
Top Bottom