The Public Broadcasting System is trying to teach kids not to buy things. There’s a whole “Don’t Buy It!” section of the PBSkids.org website, with fun games and activities that all teach one lesson: capitalist robber-barons are lying thieves, and you would be a fool and a traitor to the proletariat if you bought something — especially something that was advertised on commercial television.

But the lessons are not always absorbed. There’s a “Design a Cereal Box” exercise, to show how manipulative cereal packaging brainwashes little proles. When Faith showed me the one she designed (I think she named it “Yum Crunch”), she said, “I wish it was real, so we could buy it!”