By Chris Peters
The 30-second TV commercial opens with a computer graphic of the earth from outer space.
In a blinding white flash the viewer is suddenly on a roller-coaster ride between the keys of a computer keyboard.
Images of cell phones and computers flash in the background.
A woman’s voice announces, “in today’s fast-changing world, lifelong learning is essential.”
The ad is not a pitch for a new microchip, IBM solution or the latest mobile-phone wizardry.
It is a commercial promoting teacher testing.
The rest of the commercial leads the viewer through pristine classrooms where new teachers concentrate while taking “a qualifying test” and old teachers happily participate in “professional development to maintain certification.”
Karim Karim, 45, a professor of mass communication at Carleton University who teaches an advertising class, believes the ad is “fairly persuasive, leading people down the garden path to agree that testing is a necessary thing.”
Karim notes the ads “contain hardly any information…no statistics, no research…little information you could use. The rest is persuasion.”
He feels the images of doctors are significant. The government is trying to “make the viewer think ‘would you trust a doctor who’s not certified?’”
Chris Nicholson, 21, a mass communications student at Carleton, had never seen the ad until Centretown News showed it to him. What struck him was the “technological-determinist theme.
“Every shot was in a lab … it’s like ‘oooh, science!’”
His friend David Baeta, 22, feels the ad “gave no real information, it just said we’re going to do [teacher testing].”
The fall 2001 issue of On magazine, was devoted to education. Distributed to all households in Ontario, it devoted two pages to material about “helping teachers stay up-to-date.”
The article explained why teacher testing was implemented and briefly outlined the program: “qualifying test, ongoing learning, standardizing performance reviews and helping teachers and recognizing excellence.”
A sidebar justifies the tests, citing “global lessons” from other teacher-testing programs and noting compulsory continued learning in other professions.
Two sentences in the two-page article acknowledge that most teachers already participate in skill upgrading.
Taxpayers’ cost of the advertising campaign—$6 million.
Two television ads produced by DraftWorldwide, a Toronto-based advertising agency retained by the Ontario Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health, cost $4.5 million.
The education issue of On magazine, cost $1.5 million.
According to AC Nielsen, a marketing research company, the Harris government spent $59 million in advertising in 2000, making it Canada’s 16th highest advertising spender.
Liberal education critic Gerald Kennedy says “there is no public interest value for [the teacher testing] ads.”
In a Centretown survey on Nov. 16, only 4 per cent of respondents who were aware of the teacher-testing program specifically said they learned about it through “TV ads.”
Kennedy says, “Rather than spend $6 million [on the ads]…they should have [spent] on textbooks, teachers…and class size.”
Rob Savage, an assistant to education minister Janet Ecker and media relations director for the Ministry of Education, did not return phone calls requesting comment.
In the Aug. 22 issue of the National Post, Minister of Education Janet Ecker, responded to allegations of politically-motivated advertising.
“If we’re serious about communicating with parents, I think it’s important for us to use all of the communications tools that are available.”
“We’ve spent $13.8 billion this year in a public education system…I think an investment of $5 million to $6 million in keeping parents informed is a worthwhile investment.”
Many teachers aren’t buying the ad, or Ecker’s defence of it.
Tony Pearson, Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation president for Ottawa- Carleton, calls the ads “taxpayer subsidized Tory propaganda.”
“Taxpayers who read or see (the ads) should realize it’s political posturing coming from a government that continually undermines education…in this province, ” Pearson cautions.