WhatTheyThink’s Going Green has joined forces with Two Sides to help address the “perceptions” that paper destroys forests, that electronic media are “greener” than print and paper, and that recycling is the solution to all environmental ills. Last week, it was announced that, after 84 years in business, the staple of many of our childhoods—the Weekly Reader—has ceased publication. Why should you care? This is a slight departure for the Fast Fact this week, inspired by BoSacks’ “obituary” for the Weekly Reader.

The death of My Weekly Reader seems to me to be such a missed opportunity. Here was a great and potential cornerstone for sustaining the newspaper industry perhaps a decade longer, now murdered after 84 years of publishing to the youth of America. For three-quarters of a century the young of America were ever so gently brainwashed that interesting things could be learned by reading from a sheet of printed paper.

Here is a disturbing quote from the New York Times’ own obit:

While it is tempting to see the close of Weekly Reader as another example of a shrinking print audience, Mr. Goff said that would be misleading. Rather, he pointed to the focus on teaching to the test that has made anything other than math and reading extraneous. “There has been a general loss of teaching kids about current events,” he said. “That is something that has been squeezed out of the classroom.”

Perhaps the demise of the Weekly Reader is symbolic of a general demise in our educational system. As BoSacks comments, “If the school time is being replaced by every child huddling with the teacher and their iPads and reading the news, well I’m OK with that. That is the true future of the news and reading industry. But if they have replaced the My Weekly Reader session with more fake learning strictly for tests that don’t really work, than I am appalled.” It’s not a question of how people get news and information—especially kids who should be taught at an early age to pay attention to current events. Yes, some of my fondness of the Weekly Reader is steeped in nostalgia, but it was an important resource—and one that doesn’t seem like is being replaced, wither with print or any other medium. And that’s the shame of it all. For more Two Sides facts see http://www.twosides.us/mythsandfacts.