Does Scholastic Deserve a Failing Grade?
Has Scholastic, the direct-to-classroom publisher and bookseller, lost its way, pushing cheap toys and video games straight into your kids’ backpacks, all in the name of promoting reading and kicking a few bucks back to our ailing schools? Judging by the number of articles and posts I’ve run across lately, I don’t think I’m alone in having serious doubts about what role — if any — Scholastic should be allowed to have in schools. I understand that the schools receive books and teaching material from Scholastic based on sales through students, and I don’t have a particular issue with that. Other than the fact that it’s a little sad when school budgets are apparently low enough that supplemental fund raising is needed to help equip the classroom, but that’s another story. Obviously, I wholeheartedly support the idea of promoting reading to children. Selling books to kids at decent prices, which in turn helps to support the school seems to be a reasonable balance then. One of the key facto
