The Educational Director Who Could

This is a great story. Bill Bigelow taught high school social studies in Portland, Oregon for almost 30 years before becoming the curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools and the co-director of the Zinn Educational Project. In 2011, while he was developing academic activities on coal and climate change for Rethinking Schools magazine, he came across The United States of Energy, a pro-coal propaganda “curriculum” for fourth grade students that had been sponsored by the coal industry and published by Scholastic, the well-known education publisher.

            Bigelow wrote a critique of The United States of Energy and teamed up with another prominent educator. Before long the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace were on board with the effort.

            As a result, Scholastic severed ties with the coal industry and stopped distribution of The United States of Energy. Scholastic also began a review of its “In School Marketing” program.

            I love stories like this, when one individual brings about a needed change by simply speaking the truth. Now if Bigelow and Rethinking Schools could just get the coal companies out of the schoolrooms of Appalachia, where they still run the show.