CCFC Tells Scholastic Book Fairs to Stop Selling Junk in Schools

Posted by Susan Carney Mar 4, 2009

The Campaigng for a Commercial Free Childhood is one of my favorite organizations. Why? Because they work hard at something I believe strongly in: fighting the incessant marketing of unhealthy products and the corresponding value of consumption to our kids. Currently, they are involved in a campaign against Scholastic (yes, that Scholastic). If you’ve been to a school-sponsored Scholastic Book Fair lately, you may have noticed a lot more than books being sold at these things. As good marketers often do, they tie books in with lots of other junk that has nothing to do with reading: toys, electronic gadgets, jewelry, etc.

This is a problem on several levels. First, packaging a bunch of crap with books diverts kids’ attention away from the purpose of buying a book in the first place: to READ it. Not to be entertained and amused by toys. Second, Scholastic is in the enviable position of being welcomed into schools nationwide, with the expectation that they will provide affordable reading items for our kids. They are exploiting their position by tossing in all this other stuff that many educators and parents don’t even want their kids to have. But kids want it, it sells, and so it’s inclusion meets the goals of the company (sell stuff), but works against the goals of teachers and parents (get kids to read.) Third, many of these items are tied to popular brands, indoctrinating schoolchildren into the culturally popular mindset of “buy, buy, buy.”

You can join CCFC in this noble effort. Click here for info on how. For fellow Facebookers out there, there is even a Facebook group you can join to get more info and help spread to work to your Facebook friends.