Watch Your Words

...By expressing my assumption that standard written English would be part of a composition curriculum, I had set myself up for an ambush...

...Feminists and minority-group advocates seek to create a more egalitarian society by projecting a bias- and stereotypefree world onto educational materials...

...That is the sort of nonsense Diane Ravitch has made a career of debunking...

...Moreover, by seeking to insure that everything we read will "enhance our self-esteem or...

...Given the increasingly Orwellian manipulation of language in political discourse of late, Ravitch's assessment of the dangers of allowing censorship to persist is well timed...

...As an example of the salutary effect this could have, she cites the outrage that greeted a recent exposé of censorship of literary excerpts by the New York State Education Department, which then promised to stop the practice...

...Unemployment...

...It should come as no surprise, the author argues, that children prefer "an uncensored and sensationalized popular culture, skillfully produced by amoral entrepreneurs who are expert at targeting the tastes of bored teenagers" to the mind-numbing dullness of the bowdlerized material they encounter in school...

...Politics...

...Evolution...

...Unsafe situations...

...Weapons and violence...

...Both groups essentially and, Ravitch contends, disastrously, misinterpret the function of literature in society...

...To correct a student's grammar is to devalue his or herpersonhood, etc...

...Although much of the book is dedicated to a detailed description of the processes of censorship, Ravitch's analysis of the origins of language policing is perhaps the book's most important contribution...

...From a Glossary of Banned Words and Usages in 'The Language Police" able-bodied (banned as offensive, replace with person who is nondisabled) Adam and Eve (replace with Eve and Adam to demonstrate that males do not take priority over females) aged, the (banned as demeaning to older persons) doorman (banned as sexist, replace with door attendant) extremist (banned as ethnocentric, replace with believer, follower, adherent) fat (banned, replace with heavy, obese) Founding Fathers (banned as sexist, replace with the founders, the framers) huts (banned as ethnocentric, replace with small houses) jungle (banned, replace with rain forest, savannah) normal (banned as offensive, replace with a person without disabilities) soda (banned for regional bias, replace with Coke, Pepsi [however, note that brand names are banned by California social content review guidelines]) tote (banned as regional bias, replace with brown paper bag) yacht (banned as elitist...

...Wisely curtailing her own commentary and letting the ridiculousness of the "bias and sensitivity guidelines" speak for themselves, she convincingly demonstrates that the net result of these campaigns is a code so thoroughly restrictive it borders on the absurd...

...Death and disease...

...Disrespectful or criminal behavior...

...Reviewed by Kristen Case Editor, "Twelfth Street Review" WHEN I BEGAN my stint as an adjunct English instructor at the City University of New York's Brooklyn College, the head of the department recommended that I take a course entitled "Theories of College-level English Composition...

...Riverside Publishing's list of forbidden topics for reading tests seems fairly representative of the industry: "Abortion...

...Ravitch makes a convincing case that such thinking has already eroded our sense of what schools can and should accomplish...

...Some of these "emotionally charged topics" are obviously avoided because of their political overtones...

...When similar "guidelines" are imposed on textbooks and children's literature anthologies (and Ravitch provides ample evidence that they are), the problem becomes clear...

...First, she urges eliminating "the state textbook adoption process...

...It also accounts for the literature textbooks being crammed with stories about adolescent body-image and self-esteem and excerpts from the scripts of TV's Xena: Warrior Princess...

...That would reduce the enormous influence big states like California and Texas exert over what is published and encourage new imprints to go up against the giant publishing conglomerates—in other words, introduce a healthy dose of competition into the textbook market...

...Where language is seen first and foremost as a political tool, its use is perceived principally as an exercise in power...

...My question, I now see, was hopelessly naive...

...The censors on the Left wage their offensive in the name of fairness and the eradication ofbias, Ravitch explains, while those on the Right crusade against the evils of evolution and "secular humanism...

...Her acerbic critique of the turn progressive education has taken, Left Back: A Centu?? of Battles Over School Reform, established her as a maverick historian of education...

...At the end of the first class, I asked whether anyone had any useful strategies for helping students understand that the fundamentals of English grammar were worth learning...

...Students learn to write effectively by feeling "empowered," the professor stressed, not by memorizing meaningless and arbitrary rules...

...The reasons were that it "favors students who live in regions where those activities are common," and it "suggests] that people who are blind are somehow...

...Second, Ravitch proposes requiring states and publishers to make their bias guildelines public...

...Social problems (such as child abuse, animal abuse and addiction...

...Ravitch's new book is a smart, savage exposé of the absurdities wrought by both sides of the culture wars...

...Religion...

...Thus my desire to teach my students grammar was interpreted by my colleagues as "oppressive...

...Finally, Ravitch argues for better educated teachers, who would be more critical textbook consumers and could exert pressure on the publishers by demanding superior products...

...The idea that students will be alienated and "disempowered" by anything that presents a reality different from the one they already know is today antithetical to the very essence of education...

...Her demand for an educational environment that pushes students to confront, rather than avoid, the larger world is one we ignore at our own peril...

...Indeed, the consequences of this misinterpretation are increasingly dire: "We must recognize that the censorship...

...For their part, conservative religious groups seek to wipe out divorce, evolution and rebellious behavior by erasing references to single-parent families, dinosaurs and naughty children from the textbooks...

...I should instead reject the "elitist" idea that there is such a thing as "correct" English, and validate the language the students already use...

...Delete "magic, witchcraft and the supernatural," or "unsafe situations," and the poverty of what remains is self-evident...

...The most compelling aspect of The Language Police is Ravitch's argument that real, effective education involves grappling with the unfamiliar, the difficult, even the offensive...

...Far more insidious is the pursuit of the notion that language shapes political reality...

...Personal appearance (such as height and weight...

...Creatures that are thought to be scary or dirty, like scorpions, rats and roaches...

...Magic, witchcraft, the supernatural...

...Expensive consumer goods...

...A chorus of my classmates chimed in: Grammar is a tool of oppression that marginalizes students from different language backgrounds...

...Others are taboo simply because they could upset sensitive children and thereby negatively affect their test performance...

...But the careful sidestepping of "sensitive" subjects is only the most obvious form of censorship, Ravitch points out...

...By avoiding controversy, we teach them to avoid reality...

...An early advocate of traditional, standards-based curricula, she is also committed to the idea of schools as "the great agencies of social equality," a view that recalls progressive philosopher John Dewey...

...Thus anthologies of children's literature must maintain a meticulously even body count of male and female characters (animals as well as humans), elderly people must be depicted jogging or fixing roofs, and African-Americans must never appear in inner-city settings...

...It carefully describes each Kafkaesque branch of the "protocol of beneficent censorship, quietly endorsed and broadly implemented by test publishers, textbook publishers, states, and the Federal government...

...worse off' and have a more difficult time facing dangers than those who are not blind...

...This argument closely resembles the insistence among test and textbook publishers that all materials must be "relevant" to the life experience of their student readers...

...While conservative groups insist on a sterilized and idealized version of the past ("an Arcadia of happy family life...

...What began in the 1960s as a recognition of the latent political content of the language of textbooks and other school materials has become, in many academic and pedagogical circles, a direct conflation of language and politics...

...Her threefold solution is persuasive as well...

...For censors on both the Right and the Left," she shows, "reading is a means of role-modeling and behavior modification...

...Great literature does not comfort us," she writes, and neither should great teaching...

...Ravitch reports the rejection of a reading passage "about a heroic young blind man who hiked to the top of Mount McKinley...

...now so widespread in education represents a systemic breakdown in our ability to educate the next generation and to transmit to them a full and open range of ideas about important issues in the world...

...make us feel that we are 'included' in the story," we are forfeiting the true benefit history and literature have to offer: a means of transcending the boundaries of the self and of recognizing a larger world...

...Leftists promote an equally bland and Utopian vision of the future...