Scholastic found that it either had to give in to the hardliners who wanted to ban books for children or to not allow that, and they seem to have decided to give in.
Not sure how you read this as “they caved.”
If the choices are to continue to sell these books at book fairs and to not sell them and they are now allowing schools to not sell them, it seems like they caved, correct?
There is now enacted or pending legislation in more than 30 U.S. states prohibiting certain kinds of books from being in schools – mostly LGBTQIA+ titles and books that engage with the presence of racism in our country. Because Scholastic Book Fairs are invited into schools, where books can be purchased by kids on their own, these laws create an almost impossible dilemma: back away from these titles or risk making teachers, librarians, and volunteers vulnerable to being fired, sued, or prosecuted.
Land of the free.
From the link:
To continue offering these books, as well as even more high interest titles, we created an additional collection called Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice for our U.S. elementary school fairs.
So they took all the books with topics that isolationist conservatives believe are bad and corralled them into a separate collection that can be easily excluded by schools. This way, more schools can participate in their book fairs and make Scholastic more money.
Because that’s what’s most important to them.
In the regions that have banned or will ban books legislatively but still ironically hold book fairs, scholastic is letting the schools themselves decide which books to display, rather than including the books in the book fair shipments without notifying the schools first.
It’s exactly this. Teachers are getting arrested over books. Do you want book fairs to end completely because a teacher won’t run it because they’re afraid a “bad book” might show up and it would be blamed on them?
This is a GOOD thing. Go after the shitty politicians, not Scholastic trying to accommodate this bullshit.
They could have at least made this “controversial” collection of books opt-out instead of opt-in.
Opt in makes it less likely a teacher orders it by accident. And they called it things like “stories of inclusivity”. It’s pretty on the nose that they support these books and are calling out those who wouldn’t as being “uninclusive”.
