Posted on 07/03/2014 7:15:51 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
When Target, Inc. attempted to spread good will in the San Francisco Bay area—a market it was entering—the department store chain encountered resentment of its efforts to refurbish a public school library—from the librarian. target remodel library
“I want my son to come home from school telling me what he has learned about whales or poems or the water cycle, not about Target’s mascot Bullseye or where we should shop,” school librarian Rachel Cloues writes in the summer issue of the magazine Rethinking Schools. While many parents might sympathize with this sentiment, it should be noted that it comes only at the end of her article.
The bulk of her piece reflects the type of animosity one might expect when elites encounter more down-to-earth Americans. “On the second day of school that fall, as the Target School Library Makeover began, two famous NASCAR drivers arrived at my school with their Target-sponsored race car, fully covered in red and white bulls-eyes,” Cloues recalled. “A ‘reading assembly’ was held for the entire school on the play yard (a customized kickoff event is one of the options HOA [Heart of America Foundation, which cosponsored the remodeling] offers its corporate partners as part of the makeover program).”
“The NASCAR celebrities read a picture book to the students and then posed for pictures with each class in front of the race car.” If the NASCAR experience took Cloues aback, a much greater culture shock was yet to come—Bullseye.
“The nadir for me came the day of the opening ceremony, when someone arrived dressed up as the Target mascot—a white bull terrier named Bullseye—and sat for the duration of the Target-focused program in my (the teacher-librarian’s) new chair.”
This is nothing compared to Common Core, which sells product placement in the Common Core “standardized” tests.
My Dear Librarian,
The need for storefront libraries has been eclipsed by the use of the WWW. Didn’t somebody tell you?
I can’t imagine she isn’t familiar with the availability of porn in her own library via that machine that sits over there on that table with the glossy Target emblem.
Guess her real concern is whether she’ll still have a job in a few years.
This same librarian wote an article where she states:
As a result, most of the books we received do not reflect the culture or home language of the majority of the school community. Teacher-librarians spend a lot of time reviewing and selecting the best possible books for their school libraries, generally high-quality and high-interest fiction and nonfiction that has been reviewed by professional journals, won literary awards, and matches the curriculum and mission of the school. The most effective libraries—like the most effective classrooms—do not use one-size-fits-all materials. Eighty percent of the students at our bilingual school are Latina/o, yet only a handful of the books from the Target makeover came in Spanish. Most of the picture books are not high-quality literature, and very few of them depict people of color as major characters. A set of library books for parents also came with the makeover. A nice idea, perhaps, but almost every book portrays a smiling white man or white woman on the cover; titles include Mommy Millionaire, The Six-Day Financial Makeover, The Smart Cookies’ Guide to Making More Dough, and Simple Solutions for Families in the Fast Lane. I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that many of the books Target gave our school community support a consumerist vision of the world. Most of these 200 parent books (with only a few in Spanish) are not only inappropriate, but also offensive in a school where more than 80 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, and parents juggle multiple jobs to keep their families afloat in a city with the highest rents in the nation.
She is very upset that most of the books donated are written in English.
Maybe if she knew any Spanish she would know that the masculine term overrides (sorry, don't know the exact linguistic term) the feminine. A dozen South American women would be latinas. If you add one man then the group are now latinos, not latina/os.
Don't impose your cultural imperialism on our friends south of the border [ said just to make leftist heads explode from their cognitive dissonance of trying to balance linguistic feminism versus cultural sensitivity :-) ].
The only book in Spanish, etc. in ANY library is a xxx-English dictionary. Some years ago the NYC library bragged it had the largest Korean language book collection in the U.S. and my first thought was "What reason do they have to assimilate"?
I encountered the same attitude when I was working on my master’s degree in library science.
Many of the people in the program looked down on ordinary people.
80% pf kids on free school programs. High percentage of kids can’t read English. The solution? Give them books in Spanish!
While some of those books won’t be checked out too often, how about the Librarian do some leg work and find some donors and books that WILL help. The money guy on the radio that makes a big deal out of no debt, and he’s Christian. I bet he would donate some of his books (and get free publicity). And probably 1000 other groups and people that would do the same thing.
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