The story behind this topic has been running rampant on Pubyac lately:
Basically, Scholastic teamed up with the American Coal Foundation to produce and distribute a curriculum for 4th graders on the coal industry. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be part of a series or if it's a stand alone product. The criticism is that it presents a biased view of the coal industry as it does not mention any of the negatives. It has been called inaccurate. After the backlash, it appears that Scholastic has pulled back from the curriculum.
At first I was thought it was highly irresponsible of Scholastic to be involved in this if it truly is inaccurate and biased. Then someone chimed into the Pubyac discussion and pointed out that the criticisms to the curriculum were also criticizing her town's way of life and called the calls to pull it censorship.
I haven't seen the curriculum. I know next to nothing about coal mining. I don't know if the curriculum is presenting false information or simply not presenting a full picture. If it is presenting truly false information, then Scholastic should consider their integrity and reputation and pull the publication. If this is the case, then schools should not purchase the curriculum. And the outcry would be justified.
However, if the presentation is merely biased toward the coal industry and the information presented is accurate, it gets trickier. Certainly other biased information gets presented in schools. If we were to take out everything that only presents one side of an argument, other education materials would be eliminated. It becomes the school's responsibility to provide materials to present other viewpoints, if it chooses to spend limited resources on this curriculum.
I'm sure this isn't a popular stance, but as librarians we are supposed to provide access to information regardles of bias, right?
As librarian we are supposed to provide all viewpoints so that bias isn't an issue for libraries. But I see your point with schools. They do present biased information and I think any school that purchased the "United States of Energy” materials could easily choose to research and present some of the disadvantages if they choose to.
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