From “Making Scholastic Inc. shape up,” by Jim Hightower, Tucson Weekly, September 1 – 7, 2011, p. 6:
“The vast majority of our programs are not controversial,” says the CEO of the world’s largest publisher of children’s educational material, “but once in a while, there is a slip-up in editorial judgement.”
I’ll say! Like taking big bucks from Big Coal to produce a curriculum packet for fourth grade teachers that was a shameless propaganda piece for — guess who? — Big Coal. That “slip-up” by Scholastic Inc. precipitated an avalanche of anger from parents, children’s advocacy groups and environmentalists. The $2 billion-per-year corporation was buried in bad publicity and stung with fundamental questions about the integrity of its classroom materials.
Read the rest at http://www.jimhightower.com/node/7535.
Reads Well founder Jennifer Cornell has worked as a pet sitter, a sandwich maker, a field biologist, a community support coordinator, a scientific illustrator, a public speaking coach and a professor of English.
In addition to fiction, she has published original research in a wide range of fields, including the defensive behaviour of Buckmoth caterpillars (Hemileuca lucina), representations of political violence in film and literature, the Black Death, restorative justice, and the literary motif of star-crossed love. She’s been teaching somebody something for over 25 years. 
