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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
In her new bestseller "The Language Police," historian Diane Ravitch rips into the p.c. cops who are ruining America's textbooks in the name of "sensitivity."
May 16, 2003 | In the fairy tale world of educational publishing, there are no heroines.
No blizzards, rats or owls, either.
That's because these words -- along with over 500 others -- have been banned under the mandatory bias guidelines that must be followed by publishers of children's textbooks and tests.
According to these guidelines, heroines are sexist, blizzards demonstrate regional prejudice, rats are too scary and owls are culturally insensitive because they're associated with death in some cultures.
"The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn"
By Diane Ravitch
Knopf
Nonfiction
Pressure groups from the far left and right have hijacked children's education, claims educational historian Diane Ravitch, and replaced it with adult politics. What's worse, she says, most parents have no idea this is happening. In her damning new book, "The Language Police," Ravitch, who was an assistant secretary in the Department of Education under former President Bush and served on a board overseeing the development of national tests in the Clinton administration, outlines the byzantine approval process publishers must go through in order not to offend any pressure group, no matter how small. She says that the results of these guidelines are bloodless history textbooks that border on inaccuracy and bowdlerized literature devoid of controversial language or topics.
Salon spoke to Ravitch about the controversy over the word "American," the "sensitivity readers" who approve textbooks, and Harry Potter's dysfunctional family.
I learned how to read through Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales. What would the language police say are the long-term negative consequences of my having loved "The Little Match Girl" as a child?
There would be people from various advocacy groups who would say that your mind had been warped. That you were filled with all kinds of anti-feminist images, and that you'd been miseducated.
But what about the fact that I didn't take "The Little Match Girl" as a role model? Doesn't that count for something?
Well, of course. The thing is, so much of the claims these people make have absolutely no basis in reality. For instance, I give a long list of topics and words that you're not supposed to use on tests -- doughnuts (because they're considered unhealthy), birthdays (because some children do not have birthday parties) and pumpkins (because they are associated with Halloween, a pagan holiday). If they encounter a gender-biased word like, say, "salesman," or scary creatures like rats or mice or roaches, they'll be so distracted that they may not be able to complete the test.
So, let's say they're right. What's wrong with leaving those potentially scary or upsetting words out?
What's wrong with the theory is that there's no evidence to back it up. Sure, kids read stories that contain earthquakes and hurricanes and fires and somebody dies -- they read about all kinds of different situations. But the testing industry has become completely enamored of the notion that children won't be able to test well if they encounter something that upsets them. There's no basis in research for that. I've never seen the studies that demonstrate that there's any truth to that.
No studies at all?
No. The thing that's so alarming about what I documented is that all of these practices are now considered the industry standard. They haven't been debated, there's no literature in educational research publications where people argue about these practices, they're just accepted. They're stringently applied in the test development industry because of this belief that anything controversial will sink the whole test.
In Massachusetts just a couple of weeks ago there was a great flap because it turned out that the state asked the students to imagine what a snow day might be like, and there was a great hullabaloo -- how can you ask students about snow days when they haven't had a snow day, what about students who've just arrived from Latin America, they don't know what a snow day is, etc. So now those students are going to have to retake the test because people argued that large numbers of children cannot imagine what a snow day is.
So how can an educator square a desire to teach multiculturalism, and introduce new ideas to children, with concerns about regional and other biases?
Well, the reason why so much of what I've described doesn't make sense to me is that the ostensible reason for putting forth so much language policing is to promote diversity. But when you look at the so-called stereotypes, some of the ideas within them represent differences that you would associate with diversity. As I say in the book, you can't show people of color sharing a common heritage, including language, dance, music and food preferences. For example, you can't show Native American children playing with toys from their own cultures, but you can't show them playing with toys from the mainstream culture -- what are they supposed to play with?
Language changes in response to social changes. What we don't need is a list. In some cases you can't say landlord, you can't say busybody.
Speaking of the list, which banned word do you find most egregious? Do you have a favorite?
The notion that you're not supposed to refer to "American" or "America" when you refer to people who live in the United States, because that's biased against Latin Americans, Canadians, etc. I mean, that is so commonplace. One rule of thumb that I have is if the New York Times does it, it can't be so bad. And the New York Times uses "American" every day. But if you're writing for the textbook publishing industry, you're not supposed to do that.
I also get particularly incensed about all the stereotypes having to do with older people, and I feel I'm on safer ground complaining about that because I'm now 64, and I can be considered an older person. The natural process of life is that as you get older you do have to use various things like canes and walkers, but you can't portray those images, you can't see those things.
Let's say I wanted to be a sensitivity reviewer. What kind of background would I need to get onto a bias panel?
New York state trains people, and they're called certified New York state sensitivity reviewers -- and they're the people who went through the passages that were going to be used on the New York State English regency test and had the temerity to rewrite Kafka. Of the résumés I looked at, most of the people did not have a background in English literature or in history. They were trained in sensitivity, and trained in the education of minority groups.
Have you gotten any criticism from anyone who's worked for test or textbook publishers?
I have not heard from textbook publishers, but I've heard from people who worked for them. One guy in the testing business, who works for a major firm, just sent me the guidelines that are used in Michigan. And the guidelines in Michigan say that you can't have any reference on the state tests to extraterrestrials or aliens or flying saucers, because they might suggest evolution.
What?
I know. I think it's so funny -- what does an extraterrestrial have to do with evolution?
