This Monday, in commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. day, students gathered in the service-learning center to write letters to Pearson Education, a British publishing company, protesting a textbook that, they said, implied that women and people of color could not become president of the United States.
“So You Want to be President,” published in 2000, illustrates all the presidents of the United States up through George W. Bush. The book, which has been incorporated into elementary school textbooks, ends with an image of past presidential candidates Jesse Jackson and Geraldine Ferraro roped off from the group of presidents.
“No person of color has been elected president,” the text of the book reads. Though newer editions of the book include President Barack Obama, the illustrated textbook still uses the old pictures, despite the fact that there is a 2012 updated edition that includes a picture of Obama.
The picture was copyrighted the year before “Reading Street Common Core,” the updated edition, was published, so when Pearson Education put the textbook together, they chose to use the old picture instead of the new one.
When fourth-graders at Gerald R. Ford Academic Center saw this picture, they wanted to take action.
“The children’s teacher encouraged them to write letters to the publishers asking for them to change it,” said senior Kelsey Stark, who coordinates dorms’ community partnerships. “Since we ‘service-learn’ there, the students and Oakdale Neighbors asked if we wanted to write letters along side the kids, so that’s what we did.”
In total, around 30 students showed up to write to the publishers. “It went really well,” said senior Allysa Metzner, communications coordinator for the SLC. “There was a pretty good turnout.”
The SLC and the MSDO printed a letter onto postcards for students and faculty to sign.
“We had about 30 people pass through and we explained the story to them,” said Stark. “People would walk by who didn’t know anything about it and we would catch them. They would be like, ‘Yeah, this doesn’t make any sense that [the new picture] isn’t included. It should be.’”
“It’s important for us, as Calvin students, to stand in solidarity with fourth graders, especially the minority fourth graders,” emphasized Metzner. “Their accomplishments should be fairly represented in children’s literature.”
The school district, which is predominantly black and Hispanic, felt that the lack of representation was extremely problematic. The SLC hopes that by supporting the fourth graders in this campaign, it will encourage the students to continue to question poor representation.
