Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt:
The next book on my culture bookshelf is:
The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn
This book made me so angry I had a hard time finishing it. Diane Ravitch, a historian of education, worked in the US Dept. of Education under the first George Bush, and then was appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board by Clinton. This is not a book with a particular political axe to grind, but oh – there are many many axes here to grind. Mainly against special interest groups, minority groups, and the religious right (all of them working together – huh? This book describes a looking glass world) … who insist that school text books and nationalized tests are edited so that the language is inoffensive.
Of course what is offensive to you might not be offensive to me, and vice versa – so text book publishers have just found it simpler to leave out anything that might cause them problems.
And so … things are out of control now. Language is in a deadlock, as more and more things are seen as potentially offensive. Not even just plain old-fashioned offensive, but POTENTIALLY offensive. Questions on national tests shouldn’t mention “mountains”, for instance … because some kids don’t live near mountains, and that might be potentially upsetting for them to learn this fact. I am not exaggerating. That is one of her actual examples.
Ravitch, as she began her work in the Clinton administration, began to realize the extent to which there was a problem – and decided to research it more. What she uncovered is a WORLD of self-censorship … The ridiculousness of some of these censored texts are enough to make you want to cry. The lunatics are running the asylum. We are letting the MOST sensitive on the planet, a small percentage, control the rest of us. If ONE person, one reaaallllly sensitive person, could be offended … could be offended … then the text book has to be modified. Hence: languages in text books are, first of all, dull. Dumbed down, flattened out, homogenized.
Anyway, I was absolutely enraged by this book.
I highly recommend it. It’s very important. I saw Ravitch on The Daily Show, and she said something like: “This is something that is going on without the consent of the parents … Nobody even knows how much censorship is going on … I felt it was really important to shine a light on this.”
In this weird world of oh-so-easily-offended people – the religious right and the politically-correct left merge. There is no difference. They are the Language Police.
It’s a travesty. This is a very important book.
This excerpt has to do with Ravitch’s first encounter with Riverside Publishing (a big text book publisher). Ravitch was part of a team to evaluate a proposed voluntary test, and they had met with Riverside to hear about their selection process of reading materials for the national test.
I wanted to interject screaming comments throughout that excerpt – it makes me so nuts. But I am grateful to Ravitch, for reporting a story that was pretty much invisible – and yet affects millions. I hope hope hope that this kind of censorship, and dread of “controversy” is an educational “phase”, one that will pass eventually. Also -uhm – rock and roll is controversial??? On what planet? People, I hate to break it to you, but we live in the United States. We do not live in Iran. Rock and roll is not controversial, and if you think it is?? Maybe you need to be home schooling your kids or living on a deserted island where you won’t have any contact with such an UPSETTING world.
Breathe … breathe …
I have never before read a book where I actually shouted at the pages.
EXCERPT FROM The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn
As I tried to understand the reasoning of the reviewers, I remembered that in 1998 the president of Riverside Publishing had met with our committee to explain how reading passages for the voluntary national test would be selected. We expressed our hope that the test would be of high quality, that it would be more than just a basic skills test. We wanted the publisher to include passages based on good literature. We thought that children should read something worthwhile when they took the test, not just banal selections. We asked whether his company would choose some readings drawn from myths and fables and other classic literature. He said they would try, but we had to bear in mind that “everything written before 1970 was either gender biased or racially biased.” He said this very casually, as though he was uttering a truth too weall known to need explanation or defense. This belief provided the backdrop for the document that he gave us that day, titled “Bias and Sensitivity Concerns in Testing.”
When I first read this document, I was astonished by the list of topics that the test publishers considered out-of-bounds, and I filed it away. Two years later, in 2000, when I saw the results of the bias and sensitivity review, I retrieved this document and found that it held the key to the reviewers’ assumptions. “Bias and Sensitivity Concerns in Testing” explained how the concept of bias had been redefined. It contained rules for self-censorship that most Americans, I believe, would find deeply disturbing.
The Riverside guidelines are a mixture of sensible general reminders about the unacceptability of bias, as well as detailed lists of words and topics that must be avoided on tests. “Bias”, it declares, is anything in a test item that might cause any student to be distracted or upset. Bias is the presence of something in a test item that would result in different performance “for two individuals of the same ability but from different subgroups.” So, for example, a test question that is upsetting to a member of group A (for instance, a girl) would prevent her from doing as well as someone who was from a different group (for instance, a boy). Bias, says the publisher, can cause inaccurate scores and measurement errors. It seems to be a settled principle that tests should not contain anything that is so upsetting to certain students that they cannot demonstrate what they know and can do. Presumably a very graphic description of violence, for example, would be so disturbing to some students that they would not be able to answer test questions. Presumably students would be upset by a test question that contained language that demeaned their race, gender, or religion. Riverside says that its tests “are designed to avoid language, symbols, gestures, words, phrases, or examples that are generally regarded as sexist, racist, otherwise offensive, inappropriate, or negative towards any group.” In addition, tests should not contain any subject matter that anyone might consider “controversial or emotionally charged.” Such things would distract test takers and prevent them from showing their true ability. It would be unfair, certainly, and the goal of a bias and sensitivity review is supposed to be fairness.
But then look at where the logic of fairness leads…
In addition to the list of banned controversial topics, there is an exhaustive description of “negative” and “sensitive” material that cannot appear on a test. Negative material includes (but is not limited to) parents quarreling, children mistreating each other, children acting disobediently toward their parents, and children showing disrespect for authority. Sensitive material includes paganism, satanism, parapsychology, magic, ghosts, extraterrestrials, Halloween, witches, or anything that might conjure up such subjects, even in the context of fantasy. Anything related to Halloween, such as pumpkins and masks, must be avoided. Gambling must be avoided, as must references to nudity, pregnancy, or giving birth, whether to animals or people. “Controversial” styles of music like rap and rock and roll are out.
But that is not all. Religious and political issues must be avoided. Reading passages must not contain even an “incidental reference” to anyone’s religion. There must not be any mention of birthdays or religious holidays (including Thanksgiving), because some children do not have birthday parties and do not share the same religion. In any material about Native Americans, care must be exercised to steer clear of religious traditions.
There must be no reference in any test passage to evolution or the origins of the universe. Writers must avoid any mention of fossils or dinosaurs. Their very existence suggests the banned topic of evolution. However, it is acceptable to refer to “animals of long ago” if there is no mention of how old they are and no suggestion that the existence of these animals implies evolution…
The bias guidelines require that test questions “model healthful personal habits.” Any references to smoking, drinking, or junk food must be eliminated. Writers must be cautious when depicting someone drinking coffee or tea and must take care not to mention even aspirin. Children must never be shown doing dangerous things, “no matter how good the moral of the story is.”
The test passages must avoid beliefs, attitudes, or values that are not embraced by just about everybody. Fables are a particular concern, because they often conclude on a cynical note or have “a pragmatic moral” that someone may find offensive. Particularly taboo, the guidelines warn, is anything that suggests secular humanism, situation ethics, or New Age religion.
The people who select reading passages for tests are directed to seek out “uplifting topics”. Anything depressing, disgusting, or scary should be eliminated.
Many topics are prohibited because testing experts agree that any less than ideal context will be so upsetting to some children that they will not be able to do their best on a test. But would children really be distracted if they read a story in which someone was fired or unemployed? Would they be disoriented if they read a story in which someone was seriously ill or parents were divorced? No educational research literature supports these prohibitions. There are no studies that show that children were unable to finish a test or do their best because they were asked to read a story in which the characters were rich or poor. Farewell then to Great Expectations, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and “The Little Match Girl”, with their unacceptable images of wealth and poverty.
The prohibitions are there not because of research findings, but because the topics upset some adults, who assume that they will upset children in the same way. Some adults sincerely believe that children will project themselves into everything they read and that they will be deeply disturbed to read that someone else is taller than they, or that other children had a birthday party or live in a big house when perhaps they are not similarly privileged. It is hard to imagine that a fourth-grade student would be paralyzed by dread by reading a story that included descriptions of mice. Clearly forbidden by such a prohibition is any excerpt from books like EB White’s Stuart Little or Robert Lawson’s Ben and Me, not to mention stories of Mickey Mouse and Mighty Mouse, and other fictional mice beloved by generations of children.
Most of the prohibitions are a direct response to long-standing complaints from the religious right. Many of the banned topics are intended to avert the controversy that might erupt if the test referred to evolution or witchcraft or religion. Spokesmen for the religious right consider any description of behavior they do not like as an endowment of that behavior. They reject depictions of magic, witchcraft, and the supernatural; they don’t want education materials to show people engaging in bad behavior, like children disobeying their parents. They have gone to court in several jurisdictions to protest against “secular humanism”, “situation ethics”, and “New Age” religion, because such ideas conflict with the moral code that is fixed in the Bible.
Test publishers have found that the best way to avoid controversy is to eliminate anything that might cause controversy. As the bias guidelines of Riverside Publishing show, quite a large number of topics are avoided (ie: censored) because fear of complaints by the religious right. But the bias guidelines try to mollify not only conservatives, but also feminists, and advocates for multiculturalism, the handicapped, and the aged. The publishers want everything to be happy, or at least not to be unhappy. Whereas the right gets topic control, the left gets control of language and images. To see how this works, we must consider what the test publisher describes as three types of fairness: representational fairness, language usage, and stereotyping.
Fascinating quotation. I haven’t read this book yet, but it strikes me from reading the excerpt that those of us who oppose such censorship are here up against something different from the PC repudiation of the literary “canon” in the universities. Whereas in the latter case one merely had some professors trying to play the book-burning dictator and eventually getting ridiculed to death for their hubris, in the former case we seem to have people who are terrified of liability and of being punished by one or more of the special interest groups who have the power to make things unpleasant for them. Since these groups operate invisibly behind the scenes, it would be difficult to hold them accountable to anyone, and one cannot expect publishers, who, after all, do have to make money, to sacrifice themselves heroically in defiance of their censors. This is a problem that may take more than ridicule or the flamboyance of our heroine Camille Paglia to correct.
Infuriating doesn’t even start to describe it. When they’re done eliminating ALL the “potentially offennsive” subject matter, um, what the fuck is left, exactly?
DaveJ:
Really really boring prose. And people wonder why kids may not think that reading is fun. Who wants to be bored out of their minds?
I will never forget the news article about a year or so ago where some school books were rewritten or banned because they had the words, “hot dog” and “hamburger” in them. They didn’t want the kids reading about junk food because apparently, THAT is what makes them fat.
Smack my forehead for me…I’m tired of doing it myself.
Did you see where in California they actually want to restrict the size of textbooks to 200 pages?
I’m all for making textbooks more interesting, but I think this type of page-length censorship is a terrible idea.
Well that’s a pretty disturbing excerpt. I’m almost afraid to buy the book, but I think I will. Mountains? Mountains are potentially upsetting? What are these people on?
DaveE:
I can only speak for myself. Oh, how I remember the first time I read Call of the Wild. I was 11. I grew up in the Northeast. Land of ocean, and muggy summers, and beautiful snowy winters. That was all I knew. And to be confronted with the frozen tundra of Alaska – something so far from my experience – was SO UPSETTING. My psyche shattered. Every time I read the words “frozen snow fields” I had to curl up in my bed and weep. I could BARELY CONCENTRATE ON THE BOOK because all I could think was:
EVERYONE DOESN’T LIVE IN RHODE ISLAND???? WHAT?????? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
/sarcasm
Idiots. Morons. Philistines. Cowards.
First of all, thanks for posting these excerpts of all books you have. Though, I may never forgive you because my list of books to read is growing and I will never catch up!
Second, thats just wrong. I hate the fact that one person, who is EXTREMELY sensitive or narrow minded gets to control what everyone else reads. The point of reading stories, especially fantasy for kids, is to find something to identify with. Kids have great imaginations and if you never expose them to new ideas, they will be stunted. If you never let them know there are mountains, how will they ever know that there are other kinds of beauty in this world to explore?
Dave E – and i know what you mean. I was almost afraid to read the book, too – because this kind of stuff makes me crazy already.
The dumbing-down of great works, the shying away of the great works because they aren’t politically orthodox –
It just makes me all steamed up!!
The book did not help. It made me realize that the situation is far worse than I thought. I could only read it in small doses. Too infuriating.
Ravitch has done a great service.
Bryan – you have it right on the money.
This is more about people being afraid of being sued by these oh-so-sensitive special interest groups – and so they figure it’s not worth the trouble to even have an excerpt from Huck Finn on the test. Who wants to deal with the hassle?
Better to pick something benign, unoffensive, and boring.
Serenity:
Your comment makes me think of the horrible transformation the Cookie Monster has been forced into in recent years.
No longer is he a raging cookie-loving Id. Now he has to remind the little fat kids watching Sesame Street: “Remember. Me only eat cookies at snack time.”
grrrrrr
LEAVE COOKIE MONSTER ALONE. Let him eat cookies 24/7, please. He is pure.
Well, five months out of the year I see “frozen snow fields” and curl up in my bed and weep, but that’s a completely different topic :).
The whole thing would be ridiculous if these people weren’t succeeding, as they seem to be. How grim and weak these people must be to think they have to shelter kids to this extreme. And shame on the companies and school boards that cave-in to them.
And remember, we can’t correct school papers with red ink…it’s too traumatic for the kids. We’ll now do it with PURPLE ink!
Fricken MORONS! An incorrect answer is an incorrect answer! The color of the pen isn’t what’s bothering the kids.
OH MY GOD! It really IS the dumbing down of America.
I don’t know if I can read this book…I may have heart failure if I do. It seriously is the biting sarcasm of people like you, Red, who make it bearable to endure.
Stupidity really does need to be painful.
LB – I completely agree with your comment except for one thing. You wrote: “The point of reading stories, especially fantasy for kids, is to find something to identify with.”
I don’t quite agree with that (at least not if it’s taken to its logical conclusions) and I think that’s part of the problem here. The special interest groups and parenting-groups think that people only should read stuff they can “identify with”.
(So: If a child has two mommies, then that child will only be able to understand children’s books where the child has “two mommies”. If the child’s parents are divorced, then the child will be completely thrown for a loop to read a book where the child’s parents are still together … etc.)
The child must be protected from pain (which often means GROWTH, ironically) at all costs.
The really sick thing about this, though, is it’s not about the kids. The kids are just the victims. It’s about the ADULTS.
But back to my point:
The people making these decisions are really unimaginative, and don’t realize that kids can identify with things that may not reflect their real-life circumstances at all. I can identify with Huckleberry Finn, even though I am a girl who grew up in the 1970s, and have nothing in common with him. I can identify with Wilbur the pig, even though I don’t live on a farm, I am not about to be slaughtered, and I am not an animal.
Fundamentalists joined up with Politically Correct Fanatics. Their concerns may be different, but their outlook is the same: LITERAL.
No magic, no complication, no ambiguity.
But back to the having to identify with the characters in books point:
The view of the text-book people (and probably more so – the parenting groups and special interest groups) is: If you are black, then why on earth would you ever read Pride and Prejudice – because what could you relate to or identify with there?
You must only read a book where you can see YOURSELF.
So there goes: Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, Wuthering Heights … I’m not in any of those books. I should only read books where the heroine is an Irish girl, growing up in Rhode Island. Who is a huge Red Sox fan. Who has a lot of cousins. Because otherwise, it is just too too upsetting.
I think the purpose of reading is … well, a millionfold.
— you learn about other worlds
— you get to walk in someone else’s shoes (I think this is far more important than reading about someone whose life is just like mine)
— you broaden your vocabulary – this is why I think dumbing-down language is a travesty too. What the hell is wrong with looking something up in the dictionary if you don’t know the meanign? I still do that!
— also: it’s fun. It’s fun to just lose yourself in some other world.
You covered most of this, LB – and I agree with the main thrust of your comment … but I just wanted to point out my own feelings about that one particular part of it.
What really pisses me off – is the Language Police have hijacked the educational system in this country (and it happened in a stealthy invisible way) – and use it to make broad sweeping political points. They are trying to indoctrinate, not educate.
Serenity –
I just had an emotional flashback to 3rd grade at the mere mention of red pen. I’ve been crying for 2 hours. Thanks a LOT.
Sheila – Excuse the confusion. Identify with wasnt the correct word to be used there. I 100% agree with your additions to what I wrote. I guess my point is more that children should read about different perspectives that open up their minds and help figure things out. Different stories help normalize different things for everyone. Thats the beauty of it.
Anyway, thanks for the additional insights that made my comment much more clear.
LB – I get what you’re saying now. Right, right: because, when you get right down to it – if it’s good literature, there will be stuff for everyone to relate to in it – because we’re all members of the human race.
Exactly.
Lmfao red! You’re such a doll. Thanks for the hearty laugh.
Feh.
The reason I read as a kid was to have experiences that were OTHER – I can’t imagine, having grown up as a flatlander Ohioan, having been upset about a question on a test about mountains, just because I hadn’t really seen one.
I knew what a freakin’ mountain was. If they think kids are so dense that they won’t know anything about things they’ve not experienced, or that they go “whoops, I guess I can’t answer that question because it talks about something outside of my immediate frame of reference,” they (the educators) should be taken to a very isolated island, left their with a supply of tuna fish and a can opener, and left to live out their lives where they can’t hurt education any more than it already is.
I think extreme literal-mindedness is at the root of this here, as red pointed out.
Adults don’t always understand what goes on in children’s heads, anyway. My mother wanted to dissuade me from reading “The Hobbit” as a 9-year-old or so because she thought it would be too scary for me. I didn’t find it scary at all, at least not at 9. (I will admit now to a certain uncomfortable frisson when Bilbo is stuck deep underground in the dark – before he finds the Ring – but I think that’s mostly adult-acquired claustrophobia talking there).
Maybe some 9 year olds would be scared witless, but not all will be. And the problem comes is that the standards seem to have to cowtow to the most lily-livered, complaining, wimpy 9 year old that’s out there – which will leave the robust, adventurous 9-year-olds rolling their eyes in disgust.