Melville House Books

Education

• Publishers try to make sense of new State Common Core Standards

  Trade publishers are scrambling to find ways to take advantage of the new State Common Core Standards, which are being implemented in K-12 schools throughout the country. While they are… Read more »

• Maryland wants to copyright students’ homework

  “Works created by employees and/or students … are properties of the Board of Education”… Read more »

• In the UK, open access for all publicly funded research by 2014

  The controversies of academic publishing, in particular the ‘academic spring’ campaign against Dutch company Elsevier for its steep and predatory pricing, have been extensively covered by this blog, here, here,… Read more »

• Language-learning to be compulsory for British children

  Across mainland Europe this summer bars will be full of Brits abroad, speaking loud English accompanied by spirited gesticulations, unidentifiable European-ish lilts, or both of the above. It’s far from… 1 / Read more »

• No Plath + no Heaney = 35,000 panicked Irish students

  It’s a wonder we couldn’t hear the panicked riffling of papers from New York. On Thursday of last week, 35,000 Irish students sat for their English lit Leaving Certificate paper,… Read more »

• Something rotten in Arizona: Where books aren’t “banned,” just put in boxes in storage

  “I grew up in South Tucson. So when I go down to Tucson Unified School District, I’m going home.” — John Huppenthal Like many of us, John Huppenthal would seem… 1 / Read more »

• Court rules against web censorship for high school students

  Good news out of the Jefferson City, MO, Federal District Court yesterday, according to this report from the American Civil Liberties Union: A federal district court ruled today that the… Read more »

• Not Beloved in the Heartland

  In December, Plymouth-Canton Community Schools (Plymouth, Michigan) Superintendent Jeremy M. Hughes removed Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel, Beloved and Graham Swift’s Booker-shortlisted Waterland from the high-school curriculum after a complaint from… 1 / Read more »

• Are we possibly altruistic animals? Sometimes?

  “Of all the murders committed in New York City in 1964 — 636, to be ­precise — only that of Catherine ­Susan Genovese launched a whole subfield of social science:… Read more »

• Homes without books

  As many as 42 percent of American children come from families without the “luxury” disposable income to purchase new books, according to a NYTimes “Fixes” blog post, and tens of… 2 / Read more »