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Barbie producer Mattel is being accused of “stealth advertising and marketing” to youngsters by way of a program that donates dolls to varsities to advertise social expertise—a program some consultants say may do extra hurt than good.
That’s in keeping with an investigative piece printed in the present day in The British Medical Journal, which highlights critics’ issues about this system.
The “Barbie Faculty of Friendship,” launched this yr, gives a set of 12 dolls and branded lesson plans, certificates, stickers, a poster, and different academic and promotional gadgets to 700 U.Ok. colleges. This system has the potential to achieve greater than 150,000 college students, in keeping with The BMJ, citing Mattel.
This system goals to show social expertise like empathy, problem-solving, compromising, and battle decision, in keeping with a February article in an trade publication.
One instructor at Lord Blyton Main Faculty in English county Tyne and Put on—one web site the place this system is used—instructed BMJ that the supplies have been welcome “given the present lack of funding in colleges.”
“We’re in a comparatively socially disadvantaged space, and plenty of of our kids don’t get the chance to have interaction in talking and listening actions about topics similar to these,” she instructed the publication.
The college’s web site options a weblog entry on this system that exhibits supplies Mattel despatched, together with a number of dolls in wheelchairs, and dolls with a wide range of pores and skin tones and hair textures.
However consultants warn of attainable destructive uncomfortable side effects of this system, like gender stereotyping, and say that company-funded analysis used to justify the “Barbie Faculty of Friendship” over-sells it to educators and oldsters alike.
“Business entities like Mattel aren’t consultants in youngsters’s well being or training,” Mark Pettricrew, public well being analysis professor on the London Faculty of Hygiene and Tropical Medication, instructed BMJ. He known as this system “alarming.”
“The Mattel supplies are closely branded—why ought to youngsters be uncovered to this kind of stealth advertising and marketing?”
Analysis selling this system, funded by Mattel and accomplished at Cardiff College in Wales, discovered increased mind exercise in youngsters who performed with Barbie and different Mattel dolls than those that performed video games on tablets or computer systems.
However that profit solely occurred when youngsters have been enjoying alone, Franziska Krob, a psychologist at Dresden College of Expertise in Germany, instructed the publication—and it disappeared when adults entered the combination.
Whereas this system could also be primarily based on the analysis, the curriculum itself shouldn’t be, Sarah Gerson, a senior lecturer at Cardiff College and a senior writer on each Mattel-sponsored research, instructed BMJ. She stated that there was “ethical ambiguity” about this system.
“It’s a tough one, for positive,” she instructed the publication.
In response to program criticism, a Mattel spokesperson reportedly despatched the publication nameless testimonials from lecturers praising scholar engagement this system created, in addition to the range of physique sorts, pores and skin tones, and disabilities represented by the dolls.
The underfunding of training means colleges should look to industrial firms to complement lesson planning. The corporate might develop this system to different markets, the spokesperson added.
Fortune reached out to the corporate for a response, and had not acquired a response as of press time.
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