Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions :

The rampant commercialization of schools is corrupting in two ways. First, most corporate- sponsored curricular material is ridden with bias, distortion and superficial fare. A study by Consumers Union found, not surprisingly, that nearly 80 percent of sponsored educational materials are slanted toward the sponsor's product or point of view. But even if corporate sponsors supplied objective teaching tools of impeccable quality, commercial advertising would still be a pernicious presence in the classroom, because it is at odds with the purpose of schools. Advertising encourages people to want things and to satisfy their desires. Education encourages people to reflect critically on their desires, to restrain or to elevate them. The purpose of advertising is to recruit consumers; the purpose of public schools is to cultivate citizens.

It isn't easy to teach students to be citizens, capable of thinking critically about the world around them, when so much of childhood consists of basic training for a consumer society. At a time when many children come to school as walking billboards of logos and labels and licensed apparel, it is all the more difficult-and all the more important-for schools to create some distance from a popular culture steeped in the ethos of consumerism.

But advertising abhors distance. It blurs the boundaries between places and makes every setting a site for selling. "Discover your own river of revenue at the schoolhouse gates!" proclaimed a brochure promoting a marketing conference for school advertisers. "Whether it's first-graders learning to read or teenagers shopping for their first car, we can guarantee an introduction of your product and company to these students in the traditional setting of the classroom!"

As the marketers storm the schoolhouse gates, cash-strapped schools, reeling from recession, property tax caps, budget cuts, and rising enrollments, feel no choice but to let them in. But the fault lies less in our schools than in us citizens. Rather than raise the public funds we need to educate our children, we choose instead to sell their time and rent their minds to Burger King and Mountain Dew.