When I was growing up, I was always a bit jealous of--if also a little perplexed by--the practice of parents "paying" their children for good grades on report cards. For example, an A earns you $10, a B $5.

I'm considerably more perplexed by the latest way of rewarding students for good grades: McDonald's has struck a deal with a Florida district to give fat-laden beef patties on crappy rolls to elementary school kids who earn top grades and who have good attendance. Connie Bennett explains:

The school board there struck the most ill-conceived, nutritionally horrific, jaw-droppingly bad deal with McDonald's restaurants in Seminole County: For the 2007-2008 school year, elementary school kids with good grades and near-perfect attendance are rewarded with Happy Meals.

That's right. If you're one of the 27,000 school kids from kindergarten through fifth grade who does well in school and comes all but one or two days to classes, you get a "food prize" -- nutritionally lacking, fatty, sugar-or-culprit-carbs laden, calorie-packed junk food.

As if that wasn't bad enough, as part of this so-called "report card incentive" program, the Seminole County schools also are allowing McDonald's to turn report cards into advertising vehicles. In fact, Stuart Elliot of the New York Times so aptly puts it, the Florida schools are "using children's report cards to help stimulate sales [at McDonald's]."

So, if you're a parent, your kids' report cards will be delivered to you, placed inside envelopes that literally force you to think about the fast-food giant. The report-card jackets feature a cartoon of Ronald McDonald, the chain's brand mascot for children, the McDonald's golden arches logo and photos of Happy Meal menu items such as Chicken McNuggets.

Increasingly, the lines between educational environments such as museums and corporate environments are blurring. What kind of education are children and teens receiving in such "brandscapes"?

Danah Boyd points us to a report by the UK National Union of Teachers that raises an alarm about the commercialization of childhood and its accompanying lifestyle pressures. Boyd writes,

Body image and sexuality are at the crux of this. Girls are sold the “right” body image through dolls and clothing and their sexuality is structured around sexually provocative clothes, makeup and other product. Fitting in requires being “sexy” even at a young age. Not surprisingly, sexism and gender stereotyping are reinforced (if not constructed) by marketers seeking to capitalize on vulnerabilities.

This is sad, but it's hardly news, right? In the school district where I grew up, gifted magnet programs were scattered throughout the district. This meant that while I attended my neighborhood's solidly middle-class elementary school for kindergarten through third grade, I transferred to a decidedly more upscale neighborhood's elementary school for grades 4 through 6. The students at my new school may have been my intellectual peers, but I was not their socioeconomic peer. My schoolteacher parents couldn't afford the latest brand-name fashions, nor did we subscribe to all the teen magazines or have cable television. Our budget for new CDs was limited, so I listened to my parents' old LPs of 1960s and 1970s hits rather than to the hot rock groups of the day. As far as I remember, there wasn't a working FM radio in the house for many years, and when I finally received my own little boom box as a birthday present, I preferred the classical station to the (in my opinion) raunchy rock station. As a result, I not only was marked physically as not cool because I wasn't wearing the right clothes or styling my hair in the latest fashion, but I also didn't have the cultural literacy--and the resulting social capital--that was required to pass as one of the cool kids. In short, I wasn't being marketed to as heavily as were my peers, and I suffered mightily for it on the social scene for many, many years. I'm surprised, then, to see that parents, teachers, and researchers are shocked that the lifestyle pressures placed on K-12 students are psychologically and emotionally crippling.

What is new, of course, is that technological saturation has increased. We used to worry about Channel One News permeating the supposedly advertising-free atmosphere of the classroom. Now students carry with them not only objects that are branded with corporate logos and distinctive designs, but that deliver targeted marketing messages, often in the guise of game-based educational experiences.

Those of us who were raised in the 1980s (I was born in 1975) are now becoming parents ourselves. Is it any surprise that, raised in the branded environments were were, we're susceptible to advertising that at once creates and offers solutions to all our parental anxieties? And given my own experiences in elementary school--and those of my "loser" or "nerdy" peers--is it any wonder that I'm paranoid about bringing up my son in a media-saturated environment?

A prime example: Beth Dornan's recent post on a Hannah Montana concert nicely illustrates a marketing hellscape. Oddly, she calls the experience "a sweet memory of childhood in the new millennium." OK, maybe it's not so odd: she a director of communications for a marketing company.

Commenting on the Webkinz's recent decision to transform its site into a vehicle by which advertisers can reach children directly, Kristen Nicole admonishes parents angry at Webkinz. She says these parents are being too protective:

I hate to break it to you, parents, but kids are going to be subject to some outside influence, no matter what you do. And I assure you, sometimes it’s better for children to have some outside influence than to be completely sheltered.

Here's the problem: even if I wanted to completely shelter my son, I don't think it's possible any more. I've been denied that choice. In an article on Salon.com, Helaine Olen explains how this became the case. In the article, Olen interviews Susan Gregory Thomas, author of Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds

. Thomas even takes the venerable Sesame Street to task for catering to younger and younger children:

Well, when we -- today's parents -- were watching "Sesame Street" as children, we were 4 and 5 years old. That is the target age for "Sesame Street." But what we do now is put infants and toddlers in front of "Sesame Street." Infants and toddlers are almost a completely different species from 4- and 5-year-olds. It turns out that an 18-month-old toddler has as much in common, cognitively speaking, with a 4-year-old as a 15-year-old girl does with a 75-year-old man.

It's complicated for an infant or toddler to process television. When they are put in front of the television, the only thing they seem to be getting out of it in a verifiable way is character recognition. That's why you see babies and toddlers so thrilled when they're at the supermarket and they recognize Elmo. But still, it wears what the marketing industry calls an "educational patina."

The problem is that the great social values that Elmo and the characters on "Sesame Street" teach are lost on children under the age of 3. They get solely a flat, one-dimensional character recognition. And the only other times that children are going to encounter the character are when a company is trying to sell the kid something. You don't see Elmo running around your park. You see Elmo when he's in diapers, when he's on juice boxes, when he's on Band-Aids and when he's on toothbrushes.

What are we to make of a world where we celebrate such saccharine experiences as the Hannah Montana concert and where six-month-old infants can begin to recognize corporate logos and characters? These turns of event sicken me more than the thought of eating a fast-food burger--and I've been vegetarian for 16 years.

Who's marketing to your children? And are you doing anything to counteract these campaigns?

Leslie Madsen-Brooks helps university faculty improve their teaching. She blogs at The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and The Multicultural Toy Box.