Thursday, February 14, 2008

A shot in the foot by local school district

*Sigh*
Our local paper ran an article that one of our local school districts cancelled its contract with Scholastic Books -- "in part" because a parent complained about its publication/distribution of The Golden Compass. At least that's how the paper spun it.

They also pointed out that this deprives our poorest elementary school, 75 percent of whose children need the school to feed them lunch, of a world of books (and I would expect this includes the "more wholesome" fare which could offset any concerns about one book's content. The school has declined to allow parents to run the book order program themselves because it draws a line between those families who have parents with spare time and money, and those who do not, so they're ruining it for everyone regardless of status, and I guess they somehow think this is better.

Nobody has heard of a school district anywhere doing this before.

My immediate temptation of course is to airdrop one copy of the Golden Compass per student over all the district schools. Not that I'm literally capable of same, of course, but I'm really ticked.

I was very poor in elementary school but still managed to order some very nice books through Scholastic. This was forty years ago. Books about Helen Keller's life, horses, Irish heroes, Bambi the book, life in Japan, you name it, I got my hands on it one way or another. What a loss.

A second reading of the article gave me some cryptic hints that the decision "raised other issues" which were supposedly the real reason for the pull -- but said NOTHING about what those issues were.

I have a call in to the school district's legal counsel so perhaps she can explain.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I was partially raised by Scholastic Book Services as well.

I'd bet money that their school librarians weren't consulted. In my experience, even in the most politically conservative school districts (Utah County UT anyone?), librarians (because of their training, I expect) are beacons of light in the community, particularly on the issue of the open availability of all kinds of ideas.

I loved the idea of airdropping The Golden Compass all over the district. Even if the series _is_ (Pullman admits) the product of a personal toxic reaction to C.S. Lewis. They are still great eye-opening fantasy adventure, especially the first two. (The third one has odd aliens, an oddly-portrayed love affair and gets too openly preachy, in my evaluation.)

Sandy

LivelyClamor said...

It didn't sound as though the rank and file school supported this at all. The lawyer for the district hasn't called me back (yet), but then it's been less than 24 hours. If no go, then I can probably get hold of a former friend who's still on the school board...

 Hello all, I started singing this song last night.  There are times when I "go on watch" -- and I am holding the spirits of two b...