Tackling turmoil and cultural change is nothing new for the 100-year-old company, now the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's literature and education materials. Founded as a single classroom magazine by
Under the 46-year stewardship of CEO, chairman and president
The publicly traded company, with sales of
The 83-year-old Robinson, a Harvard graduate and son of the founder, had worked as a teacher and took on such odd jobs as a bricklayer before joining Scholastic in the mid-1960s. During a recent interview with The AP, he talked about a wide range of issues, including COVID-19's impact on its business, online learning and tackling the issue of racial inequality. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
A. Like other companies, responding to COVID-19 has been extremely challenging. The widespread school closings impacted nearly every Scholastic division, especially our Book Fairs group, which saw fair cancellations this spring. In order to maintain the financial health of the company, we have had to make some difficult decisions including a combination of furloughs and shortened work weeks and in some cases, job elimination.
Q. When schools closed on
A. I have been deeply committed to bringing stories that promote and celebrate Black voices, experience, history and culture to children for over 50 years. This dates back to 1964 when we first introduced young readers to the multicultural magazine Scholastic Scope focusing on kids of the inner city, and our publication in 1973 of the Scholastic Black Literature Series, six anthologies published in cooperation with
Q. What are your plans to increase titles by authors of color?
A. We introduced (in January) something called “Rising Voices,” which is for first grade through grade 5 and are stories by and about and for Latino and
A. Thirty percent of our U. S. staff and 23% of our management ranks are Black, Indigenous or people of color. Three members of our 14-person executive team are people of color, and half are women. We are challenging ourselves to increase that percentage so it more closely reflects the diversity of the kids we serve across the
A. We are dealing with issues like global warming, racial inequality in a way that doesn’t polarize the issue but gives points of views on both sides and is a balanced neutral position but not in a sense of being bland. Here are the arguments on the other. Here is what people are saying. Here are questions you can ask to formulate your own view.
A. We strongly believe our books and magazines need to address tough topics that are relevant, even if we get backlash or boycotted. This year, eight of the 10 most challenged books on the American Library Association’s Most Challenged
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