Scholastic Severs Ties With the Coal Industry

May 14, 2011

Contact: 
Josh Golin, (617-896-9369; josh@commercialfreechildhood.org)
Bill Bigelow, (503-282-6848; bill@rethinkingschools.org)
Nick Berning,  (703.587.4454; nberning@foe.org)

For Immediate Release

Scholastic Severs Ties With the Coal Industry

Controversial Elementary School Materials Withdrawn After Protests

BOSTON -- May 14 -- Yesterday afternoon, Scholastic announced that it would stop distributing “The United States of Energy,” a controversial fourth grade curriculum paid for by the American Coal Foundation.  The materials were also removed from Scholastic’s website.  Scholastic’s decision came after a two-day campaign led by the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), Rethinking Schools, Friends of the Earth (FoE), Greenpeace USA, and the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD).

Statement of CCFC, Rethinking Schoools, FoE, & CBD

"Scholastic’s decision to stop distributing coal industry-funded teaching materials in elementary classrooms is a significant victory for anyone who believes that schools should be free of industry PR and teach fully and honestly about coal and other forms of energy.  It is also a testament to the activism of thousands of advocates for children, education, and the environment who are determined not to let the coal industry buy its way into schools.

We are pleased that Scholastic is no longer working with the coal industry and has committed to thoroughly reviewing its policy and editorial procedures on sponsored classroom materials. In addition to the American Coal Foundation, Scholastic’s InSchool Marketing clients have included the Cartoon Network, Claritin, SunnyD, Disney, and McDonald’s. Scholastic also worked with The Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, which is completely funded by corporate interests. It is our hope that Scholastic will choose to stop distributing all corporate and industry sponsored classroom materials. Children everywhere deserve a commercial-free education."

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (www.commercialfreechildhood.org) is a national coalition of health care professionals, educators, advocacy groups and concerned parents who counter the harmful effects of marketing to children through action, advocacy, education, research, and collaboration among organizations and individuals who care about children. CCFC is a project of Third Sector New England (www.tsne.org).

Rethinking Schools (www.rethinkingschools.org) is a nonprofit organization that publishes a quarterly magazine and other educational materials.  Rethinking Schools seeks to provide practical guidance and supportive networking for educators who want to offer academically challenging curricula for all students and to engage students in learning contexts that emphasize equality, anti-racism, and social justice.

Friends of the Earth (http://foe.org/) is fighting to defend the environment and create a more healthy and just world. Our current campaigns focus on promoting clean energy and solutions to climate change, keeping toxic and risky technologies out of the food we eat and products we use, and protecting marine ecosystems and the people who live and work near them.

The Center for Biological Diversity (www.biologicaldiversity.org) is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 320,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. 
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Scholastic's Suffocating Stereotypes

From Scholastic's Firefly Book Club, for pre-k and kindergarten children:


If you can't read the small type, here it is:

For girls, it's the "Perfectly Pink! Pack: Little princesses will love these five enchanting stories -- filled with everything PINK!"

For the boys, it's the "Power Pack: Keep active kids reading with five power-packed books about rockets, bulldozers, and more."

I guess if I want my daughter to be a good consumer I better tell her to put down that toy truck, stop being so active, and focus on being a little, enchanting, pink princess. And remind her that, in Scholastic's world,  it's the boys that have the power.

These suffocating stereotypes aren't, of course, unique to the kiddie marketers at Scholastic.  (Here's a fantastic word cloud breaking down the words used in  toy commercials aimed at boys and girls.)   But what's different is that Scholastic is using tax-payer funded time to peddle this junk to a captive audience of schoolchildren.  Remind me, again, why we let them do that. Read more!

Scholastic and SunnyD’s Shocking School Spree

Last week, Angela S. was shopping with her six-year-old son when he started excitedly lobbying her to buy SunnyD. Angela was surprised – it wasn’t a product she had ever purchased for him. Moreover, “he sounded like a commercial,” yet Angela’s family doesn’t even own a television, so she was pretty sure a TV ad wasn’t the source of his newfound enthusiasm for SunnyD. And then, as her son excitedly told her that if she bought SunnyD his class would get free books, it dawned on her why he was lobbying her: his teacher had told him to.

Her suspicions were confirmed when she got home and looked at the latest handouts that her son had brought home from school and saw a letter from his teacher promoting the “SunnyD Book Spree.” The letter, prewritten by SunnyD and festooned with the company’s logos, began:

Dear parents and guardians,

I’m very excited to tell you about a program our class is participating in that will bring free books to your child’s classroom. It’s called the SunnyD Book Spree, and the program will donate 20 books when our class sends in 20 SunnyD UPC labels. The program will also award hundreds of books to the ten schools that collect the most labels. Please help us get our free books!

How do you get teachers to shill for SunnyD? One way is by partnering with Scholastic, which isn’t shy about using its unique access to educators to promote products and brands in classrooms. Scholastic’s reputation as an educational company lends its clients’ in-school marketing activities a veneer of respectability, even – as in this case – when the product being marketed isn’t good for kids.

When I shared Angela’s concerns about the program with Scholastic’s Vice President of Corporate Communications, she emailed me, “The Sunny D program is a promotion in Parent & Child Magazine that is strictly for parents and teachers… not children.” But the SunnyD Book Spree website tells a different story. The “Tips for Teachers” include the following:

• Have a class party to "raise labels" for books—ask parents to send kids in with SunnyD.
• Keep fun cut-outs or colorful charts in the classroom, showing how many labels have been collected.
  

Sounds like SunnyD hopes and expects that kids will be actively involved in their classroom promotion. And that Angela’s experience with her son wasn’t an anomaly – it’s how the program was conceived.

So in exchange for twenty books, schools are being asked to:

1. Exploit a captive audience of students by making exposure to SunnyD ads compulsory.
2. Commercialize their classrooms by decorating their rooms with SunnyD ads and holding SunnyD events.
3. Encourage consumption of a product of really poor nutritional quality. When I asked my nutritionist friends about Sunny D, the phrase I heard most often was “sugar water.” An 8-oz serving of Sunny D has 27 grams of sugar; the same size serving of Coca-Cola has 26.
4. Encourage students to nag their parents for SunnyD, a product that a lot of parents would probably prefer not to buy for their kids.
5. Teach their young students that supporting your school means drinking – and proselytizing to others about – SunnyD. Think about how confusing it must have been for Angela’s son. He was doing what his teacher had asked. He was trying to help his school get books. And his mother was saying no because she doesn’t want him drinking beverages loaded with high-fructose corn syrup?! (Remember, he’s six years old.) Now think about another six year old, who because her parents are not keen on her drinking “sugar water,” is excluded from her class’s SunnyD party.
   

I hear so often, in these dark economic times, how schools need to “think outside the box” and “partner” with corporations. But marketing in schools isn’t a partnership. It’s exploitation. There’s a lot that kids should learn in school, but how to become a brand ambassador for a lousy beverage isn’t one of them.

Shame on SunnyD and Scholastic.

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