← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Robbie
Thread ID: 6537 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2003-05-07
2003-05-07 14:41 | User Profile
Politically-Correct Censorship Rampant In US Schools The Australian.com The Sunday Times 5-7-3
Mickey Mouse is a scary rodent. Harry Potter is anti-family. Christmas should be avoided. Dinosaurs are banned. In the wacky world of US education, the language police are out of control.
After 25 years of creeping censorship of school textbooks, the full scale of political correctness has been exposed in a startling new survey of official meddling in education.
In a book acclaimed as the first comprehensive expose of a national scandal, former US government official Diane Ravitch argues that a laudable attempt to rid US schools of racial bias and sexual discrimination has been taken to ridiculous extremes.
"Some of this censorship is trivial, some is ludicrous and some is breathtaking in its power to dumb down what children learn in school," said Ravitch, an educational historian who has worked with both Republican and Democrat administrations.
Her astounding glossary of words and topics that have been banned by individual state agencies or voluntarily suppressed by educational publishers has sparked a national row over an epidemic of what The New York Times described as "bowdlerising texts, whitewashing history and eviscerating prose".
A reviewer in The Chicago Sun-Times concluded: "This book will cause readers to gnash their teeth as they read of the outrages against common sense."
In The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn, Ravitch reveals that a story entitled The Friendly Dolphin was rejected by one school committee because it discriminated against students who did not live near the sea. Another story, The Silly Old Lady, was rejected because it contained a "negative stereotype" of an elderly woman who put too many gadgets on her bicycle. A story called A Perfect Day for Ice-Cream had to be rewritten without reference to ice-cream - because of a ban in California on any mention of junk food.
Mickey Mouse fell from favour in some schools either because of his rodent heritage or because he is also a corporate brand (banned in California and elsewhere).
Ravitch's list of test subjects that individual schools deem best avoided - on the grounds that they might distract sensitive students - includes disobedient children, ghosts, quarrelling parents, ski trips and birthday parties. In some schools, dinosaurs cannot be mentioned because they imply a theory of evolution that not all Americans accept.
Ravitch claims that the process of "cleansing" text in this manner is being applied routinely throughout the US school system. Book critics have hailed her research as the potential launch pad for a backlash against the "bias and sensitivity" panels that advise state education boards on reading matter for children.
Originally formed to eradicate blatant racial and sexual stereotyping, the panels now operate what Ravitch claims is "an increasingly bizarre policy of censorship" that has had the effect of "stripping away everything that is potentially thought-provoking and colourful from the texts children are to encounter".
Ravitch blames pressure groups of both the Left and Right for imposing dubious political agendas on the education process. She also complains that educational publishers have meekly complied in order to avoid controversy that might hurt sales.
As a result, she argues, too many US school authorities have forsaken the emotional, spiritual and aesthetic benefits of reading a good book in favour of a mechanical process they call "interacting with text".
US children, like their counterparts around the world, are at present revelling in the Harry Potter series, which breaks just about every law in the bias and sensitivity book.
Not only is Harry an orphan (banned - might be emotionally upsetting); he is also depicted as "curious, ingenious, able to overcome obstacles" (banned - sexual stereotyping); he is an "active, brave, decisive problem-solver" (banned - sexual stereotyping); and, worst of all, he has a pet owl (banned - owls are taboo for the Navajo Indians and are associated with death in some cultures).
Ravitch warns that children will not be fooled by a diet of sanitised texts when they know that Potter and similar adventures lurk on bookshelves and in cinemas. School is becoming "the Empire of Boredom", says Ravitch. "Something is terribly wrong here."
é The Australian
[url=http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,6382818,00.html]http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/print...6382818,00.html[/url]
2003-05-07 16:13 | User Profile
I'd love to see Ravitch's list of recommended readings.
I'm sure The Diary Of Ann Frank and To Kill a Mockingbird would be near the top.
I endured 12 years of public schools starting in 1950 and it was an empire of boredom even then. It was free of PC cant because it hadn't been invented. But John Dewey and the Columbia U. teaching curriculum had its own dogma that was drilled into our heads.
I never met a kid who actually enjoyed reading any book on the reading list with the notable exceptions of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. God knows what the girls enjoyed. The Good Earth maybe.
In HS we were tasked with stuff like She Stoops to Conquer, School for Scandal, MacBeth and The Merchant of Venice. Think that one's still required reading? :th:
Baltimore City School's copies were so old and beat up with worn leather covers and such small print that we kids swore The Merchant of Venice was a first edition.
Meanwhile while we were dutifully slogging through that stuff every one of us was voraciously trading those 1950's style sex novelettes marketed under the name Midnight Readers with titles such as The Stud, Suburban Sin Club, etc.
Midnight Readers are forgotten today but in 1960 they had to outsell Life, Look and Time combined.
We had a fast kid in 10th grade who had a locker full of them. He was more respected than the all city fullback on the football team.
He lent me my first midnight reader. It was entitled Sandy and had a fetching photo of a Police Gazette quality beauty on the cover. On page 1 Sandy was a virgin. Needless to say, by the end of the book her status had changed. She was more of an anti virgin.
Back on subject, this is nothing new. I suspect Ravitch's list would be just as offensive to OD readers as the one she condemns.
2003-05-08 01:34 | User Profile
Eric VZ: The Merchant of Venice. Think that one's still required reading
I HOPE so! If you get the chance, try to find the production of Merchant of Venice with John Geilgud as Shylock... (He does an AMAZING job -- he's very very old, and crotchety and whiney... just marvellous!) Joan Plowright as the lady-lawyer... just really well done! Oh, and ... who was it did the epitome of Sherlick Holmes? Ah, Jeremy Brett -- as the fellow who is to be 'cut.'
Just an amazing version!! It's out on video, I think.