NEWSLITERACY

[This guest post comes from Christine George, who has worked as a teacher in Virginina and Arizona. She has six children. --Eds]

I am a mom.  If you ask me who I am or what I do, that will always be my first answer, because “Mom” is my most important job.  I am also a Cub Scout volunteer and a former teacher and school administrator. But first and foremost, I am a mom of six wonderful boys ages one to eighteen.  Part of my job as their mother is to ensure their safety, security, health, and happiness.  So when I learn that a company that we, as parents and educators, have trusted for decades is willingly selling their impressionable little minds to the highest bidder, I get angry.  And so should you.

Scholastic is the world’s largest distributor and publisher of children’s books and an industry leader in educational technology and children’s media. Their corporate philosophy starts with “Kids love us, parents trust us, teachers depend on us...”  And they’re right, with good reason. Scholastic does a great deal to promote literacy and education worldwide.  They are the leading operator of school-based book fairs and clubs in the United States.  They provide books, magazines, reference materials, educational technology and curriculum materials to schools and libraries across the country.  Having been a teacher, I really do appreciate all they do to provide reading materials to students and schools alike.  As a result of the good work they do, they enjoy a unique position of trust in our schools.  But they are abusing that trust to surreptitiously influence the minds of our children.

Asked in February what he thought of HarperCollins' decision to cash in on libraries by selling them "self-destructing" e-books, literary superstar Neil Gaiman tweeted back in just five words: "I think it's incredibly disappointing."

HarperCollins author Gaiman - best known for novels Coraline and Stardust, as well as the comic book series The Sandman - isn't the only author who's spoken out against the publishing giant's new policy. The Rupert Murdoch-owned NewsCorp announced recently it will sell e-books to libraries that will last only 26 reads, forcing cash-strapped libraries to purchase popular titles again and again. (Librarian Andy Woodworth's campaign against the Rupert Murdoch-owned publishing house has more than 65,000 signatures on Change.org, making it one of the most popular campaigns on the site to date.)

From an award-winning children's author to a British academic, here are eight more authors critical of the HarperCollins e-book policy:

Do you have a copy of a book that's nearly falling apart because it's been read so many times? Dog-eared corners, bent binding, coffee-stains and wrinkled pages - all signs that it's a book that's been well-loved and repeatedly read.

But imagine if your favorite book disappeared if you read it too many times. It'd almost be like you were being punished for the book being too good.

That's exactly what publisher HarperCollins is doing to library e-book collections, and more than 60,000 Change.org members are standing up to the company, demanding that they change their policy which makes e-books self-destruct once they're checked out 26 times.

The size of the petition - started in April by New Jersey librarian Andy Woodworth - has garnered attention from the Library Journal, industry blog GalleyCat and global art blog Art Without Skin.

So you're the next kid in line at the library to check out a classic like The Great Gilly Hopkins, by Katherine Paterson. Old Yeller, by Fred Gipson. Ramona Quimby, Age 8, by Beverly Cleary.

If you're trying to check out those children's classics in e-book form, however, you may discover that the book's not there anymore -- because it just self-destructed.

That's the scenario HarperCollins is laying out with its new e-book policy for libraries, which limits the number of times an electronic book can be checked out to just 26. After that, the library would be forced to re-purchase the book - every time the book hits 26 checkouts.

Librarian Andy Woodworth has started a Change.org petition to tell HarperCollins that this policy is bad for readers everywhere.

Amidst the grief, confusion and finger-pointing that surround the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others on Jan. 8, another story in Tucson is also making national headlines.

Because of a new state law, the Tucson Unified School District has fewer than two months to get rid of its Mexican American Studies program. If they don't, they risk losing millions in state funding.

The "ethnic studies ban" - HB 2281 - passed last year and went into effect on the first of the year. It seeks to eliminate any courses taught in public schools that are directed to a specific ethnic group and "promote resentment" or "promote the overthrow of the U.S. government." Tucson's Mexican American studies program is the only program targeted.

In reality, the law is a thinly-veiled attempt to eliminate the telling of Mexican American history and heritage to the very students that could most benefit from it - that is, Hispanic students going to school at Tucson's embattled school district.

A parent of a child in the Seattle school system is raising a ruckus over a book that's not unfamiliar to the Banned Book List: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Her choice of book may be quite common, but the reason Lisa Sense-Wilson wants the book banned is quite new. Not because of its sexual content or because it challenges ideas about religion. But because Sense-Wilson says the book's depiction of "savages" upset her daughter.

If you haven't read Brave New World in awhile, let me refresh your memory. Huxley takes us to a futuristic "utopia" where no one has children of their own, everyone is divided into castes, and the whole population exists on a wonder-drug called "soma" which makes everyone blissfully happy. At one point, a few of the characters take a vacation to a "savage reservation," to see people who resemble a Native American tribe that still does "beastly" things - mainly, read books and have families.

They left having an image of Indian people as being criminals," said Sense-Wilson. "That we're to be feared. That we're scary. That we hold these ceremonies that are animalistic and brutal and violent."

She says the students in her daughter's class weren't able to grasp the fact that the "savages" in Huxley's book are actually portrayed as heroes in a way - strange outcasts from a "perfect" society that has many disturbing problems.

African American boys in Oakland don't have the easiest road, if you go by these statistics. Two out of three of the young people being held in juvenile detention centers in August and September in that city were black, and 50 percent of the new detainees were black boys. (The total population of African Americans in that region is just 13 percent.)

Unfortunately, numbers like this are reflective of inner city communities across the country. Story after story highlights the downward spiral of black youth, specifically black males. But here's where Oakland is differentiating itself. They're addressing the problem.

This school year, Oakland's public schools superintendent, Tony Smith, created a privately funded Cabinet-level office with one major focus, to improve the lives of black male students. Chris Chatmon was audacious enough to take on this challenge.

For six weeks, a group of Chicago moms sat down to stand up for their children. In Pilsen, a largely Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago's South Side, moms occupied for 43 days a rundown, one-story field house in their fight to have a library for the children of Whittier Elementary.

It was a David vs. Goliath story: A group of parents going to bat for their children against Chicago Public Schools, which had planned to destroy the field house and create a field, not a library. Despite intimidation by the police, fears about retaliation and frustration at bureaucratic inertia, the parents of Whittier prevailed: In late October, the head of CPS announced that Whittier students would get a library after all.

The moms' struggle -- they had been advocating for a library for seven years before they resorted to staging a sit-in -- captured attention nationwide as the group used Facebook and other social networking tools to spread the word. More than 500 Change.org members joined in, sending letters to Chicago officials expressing their support.

But is the story over? Not at all, say the moms in the group. In their meetings with Chicago Public Schools, no specific plans were made about where the library would go, when it would be built and what, exactly, the fate would be of the rundown field house where the sit-in took place. CPS will lease the field house to the moms for $1 a year -- it's currently being used as an informal afterschool location and library after hundreds of donated books poured in.

Editor's Note: This is Part 1 of an interview with Laura Ramirez, an ally to the Chicago moms staging a sit-in to demand a library for their children. Part 2 is posted here.

A 3 a.m. shift? Laura Ramirez looked at the sign-up sheet for the Whittier Elementary School sit-in and thought, Isn't that a lot to ask?

Ramirez had no personal connection to the group of South Side Chicago moms fighting to get a school library for their children. But she'd heard from a close friend that they had been organizing for seven years and still had gotten nowhere in their negotiations with the city and Chicago Public Schools.

“I got a phone call at work,” she remembers. It was her friend. “Hey, the moms took over the field house,” she said. “You need to come see this.”

After seven years of trying to change things through the system, the moms, mostly Hispanic, working moms in the Pilsen neighborhood, had decided to take a drastic route to action. Risking arrest and threats of deportation, they were going to stage a sit-in on September 15 in an old field house next to Whittier Elementary School. The moms wanted a library for their children in the building, but Chicago Public Schools called it “unsafe” and planned to knock it down, replacing it with a field.

Now, after a 44-day sit-in, national media coverage and hundreds of phone calls and letters sent from the community and beyond, the Whittier moms may have finally reached an agreement with Chicago Public Schools. CPS head Ron Huberman has agreed to build a library inside Whittier, and the field house will be leased to the moms for $1 a year to be renovated and used as a community center. A full agreement has still not been reached, however.

Ramirez, an ally to the moms, helped start their Facebook and Internet campaign under their leadership. The moms credit social media for part of their success, she says. Change.org caught up with Laura Ramirez earlier this week to talk about lessons learned from the sit-in:

Sometimes, it's not about waiting for Superman. It's about becoming one.

Things are looking good for the group of South Side Chicago moms who began a sit-in one month ago to demand a school library for their children. Parents in Pilsen, a largely Hispanic neighborhood on the South Side, began occupying an old field house at Whittier Elementary on September 15 that was slated for demolition by Chicago Public Schools. The moms wanted a library and a safe community gathering place for their children. The school district wanted an empty field (arguing that 160 of Chicago's public schools are without libraries).

Even after the district ordered the heat and hot water turned off in the field house, the moms held their ground. The City Council got involved, ordering the heat back on. As the moms' story spread, donations of books poured in. There are now over 1,000 titles being catalogued at 'La Casita,' the group's name for the field house.  

After a month of occupying the field house, Medill News reports that Chicago Alderman Danny Solis met with Ron Huberman, who heads Chicago Public Schools, on Wednesday, to talk about a compromise. Solis told Medill that CPS would consider saving the field house, and the groups may now begin negotiating a solution. 

Change.org caught up with Araceli Gonzalez-Mancilla, one of the moms in the group, and asked her about her experience so far: