Scholastic Lies to 4th Graders

Tell Scholastic to end its "InSchool Marketing" program that promotes corporate interests in classrooms. Let's say you're the CEO of McDonald's. You know kids love to eat your food, but their pesky teachers keep telling them it's not healthy. Don't worry! You have options. Scholastic (the company that publishes tons of children's books) has a program where companies like McDonald's, the American Coal Foundation, and SunnyD can pay to have teachers teach kids about their products to create "brand awareness" and "consumer loyalty."  It's called Scholastic InSchool Marketing –– and it has nothing to do with education. Here's how the program works: A corporation gives Scholastic a pile of money. In turn, Scholastic creates a curriculum designed to further "client interests," cleverly masked as actual learning opportunities for students. (For example, Scholastic sometimes says these materials will help improve students' scores on standardized tests.)  According to Scholastic, this program reaches more than 66,000 classrooms. Some terrific groups (including the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and Rethinking Schools) are fighting hard to end Scholastic InSchool Marketing. This week, they had a big win when Scholastic agreed to stop selling its "United States of Energy" curriculum (paid for by the American Coal Foundation) which teaches 4th graders about the benefits of coal while hiding all the risks to public health. Momentum is on their side. Now it's time to stop this practice for good. Sign the petition today to tell Scholastic to end its insidious InSchool Marketing division: http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-scholastic-stop-pushing-corporate-pr-in-classrooms Thanks for taking action