NYTimes: Textbook Publisher's Pro-Coal Materials Inappropriate

An editorial in the New York Times (5/13, Subscription Publication) sharply criticizes textbook publisher Scholastic for publishing "a fourth-grade lesson packet called 'The United States of Energy,' a treatise on coal that was paid for by the American Coal Foundation." The materials, the Times notes, proclaim "the benefits of coal" but forego "mention of minor things like toxic waste, mountain-top removal and greenhouse gases," to which the Times objects because given the publisher's "captive audience of children" in some "90 percent of the nation's classrooms," it "has a special obligation to adhere to high educational standards." The Times adds that Scholastic's protestations that the packet "was never meant to serve as a comprehensive curriculum" is "beside the point given that the lessons carried the company's imprimatur and were misleadingly touted as complying with national fourth-grade learning standards."