Utterly Meaningless

Other Toni here…

Just to point out that homeschoolers must also be considered formidable competition since they are specifically mentioned in the rules. I chalk that up as a win for heks whether they are allowed to enter or not.

Toni in NC

I’m pretty sure my homeowners association wouldn’t allow the grand prize in my back yard anyway.

Well I think a better solution then banning homeschoolers from the contest would be to allow the prize for sports equipment to be donated to a local community playground, recreational sports league or church of the homescoolers choice, if a homeschooler won.

The public playgrounds in my community need all the cash they can get for new equipment and for maintenance. Also recreational sports teams need somewhere to play and new equipment.. So there were alternatives to banning homeschoolers.

So can I enter if I am a private school? Then donate it to the Girls & Boys Club that could really use it?

Nance

Harumph! My take is that all the kids who are eligible and do enter (and their schools) are obviously being exploited for advertising purposes and that’s what ought to be highlighted in any boycott. Scholastic and Subway could donate the equipment directly if they wanted — they don’t need this artificial competition meme in the way. SO not the real point . . .

NPR this evening featured something about companies in China feeling an obligation to their community to pitch in supplies to the victims of the earthquake disaster there. Some strange attitude about being part of the society and being responsible. . .

Nance

Having just shelled out rather a lot of my own money on a teams’ worth of hockey equipment for the various home education groups we attend, I am not so sure that you have to be a Duggar in order to feel rather envious of this sort of offer.

I guess I could charge everyone who plays, but in the spirit of most of the groups, kids of all ages will want to drop in and out of the game. It would seem a little picky to charge by the minute.

I hope I still count as an evolved homeschooler, though.

Of course. Companies use these contests for cheap advertising, figuring that the schools will encourage all of the students to participate in the hope of winning some equipment. So, even if they gave out a jungle gym to each school, they might still have attracted 1000 sets of eyeballs.

Home educating families just don’t have that many eyeballs (Duggars excepted 🙂 )

BTW, I got a very nice email from the company last night in response to mine. They’ve promised the next contest’s rules will include HEKs.

FWIW, donations and “prizes” of all sorts of things — especially computers and playground equipment — were routinely rejected by the school board I served in the 80s, for open-ended maintenance and liabiliityconcerns, plus not having been “vetted” to fit into their overall plan of operation.

As if Pizza Hut “donated” or “awarded” an elementary reading curriculum to one school, McDonalds another and Bill Gates a third . . .or if restaurants were donating high-fat foods perhaps? –.and in loco parentis decision-makers made no decisions or distinctions, just took whatever came along and put it out for the kids. .