I am reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee for the second time. I read The Mayor of Casterbridge for the last (in this lifetime, anyway--we're finite, you know) last week. Should I live another decade or two, Bury My Heart will be read again.

Conquered cultures have few options--fight and be killed, or acquiesce, and lose your identity. The end result is the same. At least the latter option gives some hope your story will be told.

We live in interesting times.

***

Scholastic (the book company) exudes fuzzy warmth. They sell books to children. They are, in their own words, "the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books and a leader in educational technology and children’s media."


Do not be fooled by their cute logos--they are a publicly owned company, listed as SCHL on NASDAQ. You can buy a piece of the company, and because of that, the primary purpose of the company (at least according to our Supreme Court) is to maximize profits for shareholders.

I wouldn't give half a hankie's snot's worth of interest in their company if they continued on their merry way, selling books, making money, and allowing folks with more money than fortitude to stuff their portfolios with more cash than God. (Well, Jesus, anyway....)

Two things changed this:

Scholastic squashed a blogger, Marc Dean Millot, who suggested that the grants awarded by 's Race to the Top may not be as transparent as the administration would like us to believe. He posted his comments on Mark Russo's website This Week in Education, sponsored by Scholastic. Russo, under pressure from Scolastic, deleted Millot's piece, despite a contract that asserted Millot's editorial independence.

Scholastic pays the Superintendent of the Los Angeles school district Ramon Cortines $151,000/year to sit on their board of directors. He also owns chunk of stock in the same company.

Yet he does not recognize the conflict.

I've railed on about the monied folk taking over public education in past posts, boring, dry stuff. It is happening, under our watch.

Under Arne's watch.

Under Obama's watch.

This is not going to end well. In the meantime, I will teach science to my lambs as best I can while throwing enough bones towards the state test to keep my job. I'll post news as I hear it, and hope a reader or two shares with others. As for me, I'm boycotting Scholastic.

If that's not enough, I'll go rake clams for a living--muckraking of a different sort.

There's currently a program for science teachers to teach their lambs about bugs--
sponsored by Terminix. You can't make this stuff up....