Week 31 - 2023 Pity the poor educational publisher....Really?

What is Simba Information thinking about?

Pity the poor educational publisher
 
Really?
 
It is an odd thought. Companies like Mcgraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Scholastic and Pearson and other big ed publishers are of course large, wealthy corporations, and often criticized by librarians and students for their expensive texts and journals.
 
But many are now hunkered down, under siege by ongoing educational culture wars as more states and school districts restrict how race and gender may be taught in the classroom, and write their textbook adoption specifications to require adherence to those rules.
 
How should publishers respond?
 
It’s a kind of no-win dilemma. Complying with the restrictions could mean violating a publisher’s own mission on what it means to educate and notions of free expression-it can also mean alienating one’s own employee base which, particularly if younger, will have strong opinions and values that tilt towards more, not less information on these so-called “divisive topics.”
 
Ignoring the restrictions will almost certainly mean a rejection of the textbooks, and a real loss of business-and in states like Florida and Texas, that means a huge chunk of the market. 
 
It’s going to have to come down to two things for publishers: establishing priorities and creativity.  First, each publisher will need to revisit its core values and most important stakeholders and make hard decisions where there will be a necessary trade off.
 
But this challenge also calls upon creativity and imagination-there may be paths where publishers can work with their best authors to create texts that do not violate the letter of the restrictions but also do not violate their company’s larger values and mission.
 
But it won’t be easy.
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Simba will be looking for examples of educational publishers that have successfully navigated these treacherous waters and will report on them in our Education Market Advisor newsletter.