"...All went well until the children came home singing the jingles. Then the parents began to complain..."

You are reading: The EDUCATIONAL ABC's of INDUSTRY (1967-68 edition) — C is for Crush and M is for Meat!
Controversial 1960s educational booklet, marketed to school teachers as a teaching tool (including essay contest) - Entire booklet was funded by selling advertising space to corporations, teaching students that different letters of the alphabet stood for companies and commercial products. Historically significant for being an early example of advertising making its way into public school rooms, a practice which was banned at the time. (See excerpt below image from Jules Henry's book CULTURE AGAINST MAN, including a news clipping from New York Times, May 1960)

PAGES: Introduction - Page 01 - 02/03 - 04/05 - 06/07 - 08/09 - 10/11 - 12/13 - 14/15 - 16/17 - 18/19 - 20/21 - 22/23 - 24/25 - 26/27 - 28/29 - 30/31 - Back Cover

Page 6 and 7: "The world's first view of the earth" and "B is Bauer Ice Skates"

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From the book, "Culture Against Man" by Jules Henry (1965):

...So in the end the advertisements have not really hurt anybody. Who could prove they have? But this is really not my central concern. What I argue is that advertising sacred values for pecuniary ends, that the transition from relatively harmless distortion to relatively harmful is gradual, and that the most pecuniary philosophers cannot tell the difference. Consider the following:

There are rumblings from the across the border to the north. A Canadian publisher has succeeded, by dealing with individual principals and teachers, in getting a thirty-two page exercise book called "The Educational ABC's of Industry" into Ontario schools. The glossy, multicolored work book provides a rundown of the alphabet. For $7,800 a page, an advertiser was permitted to buy a letter.

Thus, in the book, C is for Orange Crush, G is for General Motors, M is for Milko, and O is for Oxo. Or with a little different approach: H is for Health, So Keep Face-Elle on hand, It's Canada's finest, the Softerized brand.

All went well until the children came home singing the jingles. Then the parents began to complain.
Officials of the Ontario Department of Education said that they did not know anything about the publication or how the booklets had found their way into the classrooms. They said that advertising material was, in fact, banned from classrooms by law.

As a result of the controversy caused by the booklet, Mr. and Mrs. John Kiernan of Toronto withdrew their daughter from the third grade at St. Basil's Separate School "because she was spending her time copying the slogans." Mrs. Kiernan commented, "We were surprised and annoyed. It smacks of brainwashing."

(New York Times May 12, 1960)