Mick Purcell was Teacher of the Year at LBJ High School in 1999 - 2000, but his campaign to remove the vending machines was a terrible failure, and he's still bitter.

When II was very young, my father insisted that I learn the three Rs: Reading, ‘Riting and ‘Rithmetic. It appalled me that he didn't know how to spell Writing or Arithmetic, but I suppose that was part of his grand plan: I was learning the three Rs.

Later, in high school, I moved beyond the basics, and like most teenagers with half a brain, I was attracted to idealism and socialism. I imagined a happy, peaceful, society in which everybody contributed according to his abilities and took according to his needs. Of course, as I learned more, my idealism was shattered. The world is a competitive place, and many people believe in Social Darwinism and other ugly ideas. It is more complicated than I once thought, but still I hold out belief that we can find some meaning in this life and live peaceably with others. Maybe that's why I became a teacher.

Now, as a teacher, I see many young people looking to me as I once looked to my father with his belief in the basics, or as I once looked to my Latin teacher with his socialist ideals; in short, the young people are asking: what should I believe? They ask because the wider world seems to be teaching them the three Cs: Consumerism, Commercialism and Competition, and many students don't want to believe in this.

Unfortunately, the answer that I provide is unsatisfactory. It is usually along the lines of: if you study the exercises from page 453, you will pass the test. Neither I nor the students want to question the hidden assumptions: pass the test, why? So you will get into a good university! get into a good university, why? So you will get a valuable degree! get a valuable degree, why? So you will get a high-paying job! get a high-paying job, why? So you will make lots of MONEY!

We educators are missing one of the central points of education today, and a point that confuses students: who are today's students, are they learners or consumers? In the old days, we teachers could happily teach poetry or mathematics, isolated from the world at large, and impress upon our students the beauty of learning and the world of ideas. The students knew they were learners. Not any more. Today's students are networked into the wider world of markets, products, information, advertising and globalization. They are not treated as learners; they are consumers. Even as I write the Binomial Theorem on the board, my students are being bombarded by messages with the latest product or the newest information.

Recently, I was teaching a mathematics lesson during the semi-final of the World Baseball Classic. At the beginning of the lesson, I asked a Japanese boy, "So, Kazumi, what's the score?"

"The USA is winning, 1 - 0."

"Right, but Kazumi, you cannot follow the baseball game during the lesson-you must stay focused on mathematics, OK?"

"OK, sure. Of course!" Kazumi is an excellent student, and he seemed a bit shaken by my suggestion. We had a good lesson and Kazumi was very much engaged, asking questions and doing everything he was asked. As the lesson was
coming to a close, I asked him, "So, Kazumi, what's the score?"

"Japan is winning, 5 - 2."

The information overload is just the latest corporate invasion of the classroom. Now, computer game companies are trying to get into schools; ten years ago, it was candy and soft drink manufacturers. Then, I was a teacher at LBJ High School in Austin, Texas. The students came to class high on Coke, 7-Up, Lays, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. They were so high on sugar, they could barely concentrate. I meekly tried to lead a campaign to get the vending machines removed. Our campaign was crushed. Puzzled, I conducted an informal survey about how much kids were spending. An average student was spending between two and three dollars a day at the vending machines, even though the student body was mostly "low income"!

If you do the mathematics, the amount of money in schools is staggering. At LBJ, ten years ago, students were spending about a million dollars per year on vending machines. But that is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of money in international schools. Most students at international schools come from affluent families and will attend prestigious universities. It is conservative to estimate that they will average a salary of $75,000 per year over a career of 40 years. Multiply that by 1000 students or 2000 students and get 3 or 6 billion dollars per school in income potential. And that's not including the larger amounts of corporate spending that they will oversee as managers in their companies.

So, when we look out at our students, we see bright eyes and eager learners. But when marketing and advertising strategists look at the same students, they see billions of dollars of earning and spending potential.

How can we protect students against the onslaught of marketing and advertising? It's not easy, but we can try a multi-faceted approach. First, as much as possible, let's not expose our students to advertising, especially during class time, when they are supposed to be learning. There are some wonderful educational materials available from companies, but let's examine our sources. Is this material from a for-profit company or a not-for-profit company? If it is a for-profit company, have they produced a quality product which is unbiased, or are there subtle brainwashing methods? Also, my personal opinion is that we should not be using Hollywood movies to "educate" children. Students get enough of that outside the classroom. Let us look instead to materials that challenge consumerism, materials like Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff.

If, as Gandhi taught, the basis of personal independence is to rid one's self of unnecessary things, and we are trying to develop independent learners, then we should model Gandhi's teaching by ridding ourselves of unnecessary stuff. "Stuff" means not only material things, but also unnecessary homework, tasks, work, to-do-lists, etc.

Secondly, we need spaces in schools that are free of computers, ipods, TVs and phones. Technology is wonderful and I use technology in my lessons, but students need spaces, both physical and temporal spaces, when they are not being bombarded by technology. I do not favor a blanket prohibition of social networking technologies, but in the arts studios, on the playing fields, in the library, and in the classroom--teachers and students can agree to find spaces or times that are free of technology, where students can have a respite from Facebook, the baseball scores, and the subtle ways that Microsoft is training their brains.

Thirdly, we are buffers in between our students and the market forces that are trying to capture their imaginations. We should take that role seriously. Instead of poking fun at them when Manchester United loses, and three of our students are too depressed to study, we can sympathetically challenge them about a system of values that places football results from another continent ahead of their own education. When they are young, students should be protected from the many market forces that are trying to get inside their brains. We must be vigilant and take great care to understand what our students are doing with their phones, and we must guide them to resist some of the market forces that want to shape them into consumers. Do your students have pornography on their phones or computers? Are you sure? When I looked closely, with permission, at my students' phones and computers, I was shocked by what I saw.

Lastly, teachers have an opportunity to model a system of values that represents an option besides the endless cycle of "work, earn, spend, consume-work, earn, spend, consume . . ." Teachers should not be showing off their iphones or driving fancy cars to work. We must show students that there is an alternative to getting sucked into the game where "he who dies with most toys wins." We can demonstrate that we love learning, and that we can achieve happiness through living a principled life with a meaningful occupation, even though we don't have huge salaries. Perhaps some of our students will eventually become obsessed with designer clothes and fast cars, but that should be their choice, not a pre-determined destiny because their teachers never showed them other possibilities.