I'm sure you're right about the commercialism in the schools, inky; that pressure was certainly there at our university (I was always really grateful to be tucked away over in artsy-fartsy humanities land, where nobody had any real expectations that our research could be shoehorned into something commercially viable! Not much fiscal support for our research, but nobody breathing down our necks, either.)
Avoiding this kind of stuff in the schools is not one of the reasons we're homeschooling, but it certainly does seem like a nice side-benefit of that choice, I must say.
minnie
PS Thanks for the link! I've used the gifts at Foster Parent's Plan several times, myself, which are nice, too (books for schoolgirls in Haiti, or beehives for Egyptian farmers, etc.).
