Yet another teacher selling ad space, this time for pizza

Welcome to yet another edition of "Signs that the economy is bad" here at The Itinerant Librarian. Today we have a report of a teacher selling ad space on his student handouts and materials for his class. The story comes from Idaho. This is not the first story of this type that I have covered here. Some other stories in this same vein:

• College professor advertises for a burrito joint in his classes.
• I've talked about corporate branding in colleges.
• And also about placing ads in textbooks.

But I get the impression that with the bad economy, we are going to see more of the entrepreneurial spirit in our school and college teachers. The latest story has a history and economics high school teacher selling ads for Pocatello Pizza. Why did he do it? Oh the usual reason of the school not having enough resources. According to the article, "The school recently cut back on paper allowances for teachers to prevent shortages." So, he struck a deal with the pizza place, and now he has plenty of paper for the rest of the term.

Now is this going to become a trend? We know how taxpayers love to whine about having to pay taxes for their public schools, yet they often whine louder when some teacher has a good idea like this one. Because at the end of the day, the ads are not really intrusive, and the teacher is just using a little ingenuity to get what he needs to educate the students. Communities should either pony up and pay to educate their kids with the necessary resources, or they should shut the hell up if they don't provide enough money, and teachers have to find it elsewhere. You don't hear the whining when the school sells the naming rights to their new football stadium to Coke or Sprint. Why would doing it in an academic classroom be any different? Sure, there is the whole thing about academic spaces getting corporate, but again, I don't see the community paying up to prevent it.

Anyways, I think this opens the way to a whole new advertising opportunity:

• Home economics is now sponsored by Frank's Crafts.
• The cooking classes would be sponsored by Pizza Hut. If in Texas, it would be either Dairy Queen or Jack in the Box.
  
• The Lowe's Shop Class.
  
• If it's auto mechanics class, that would be underwritten by Pep Boys.
  
• Biology class is sponsored by Pfizer.
  
• The library/AV Center is now the Barnes and Noble Memorial Library.
  
• Math class is brought to you by H.R. Block.
  
• Art classes are now funded by a generous contribution from Crayola.
  
• The Dow Chemistry seminar classes.
  

You get the idea. I just picked some random corporations to make the point. I did go with bigger corporations, but this could certainly work with local level businesses. If teachers like like Jeb Harrison in Idaho can make it work, it can work in other schools.

Just another sign that the economy is bad.

A hat tip to AdFreak.