|
As the
commissars of political correctness on the left and the
fundamentalist sentries of morality on the right have
clamped down on the education system, more and more
subjects, words and ideas have become taboo. According
to Diane Ravitch's
fiercely argued new book, The
Language Police, the
following are just some of the things students aren't
supposed to find in their textbooks or tests:
–
Mickey Mouse and Stuart Little (because mice,
along with rats, roaches, snakes and lice, are
considered to be upsetting to children).
–
Stories or pictures showing a mother cooking dinner for
her children, or a black family living in a city
neighborhood (because such images are thought to purvey
gender or racial stereotypes).
–
Tales set in jungles, forests, mountains or by the sea
(because such settings are believed to display "a
regional bias").
–
Narratives involving angry, loud-mouthed characters,
quarreling parents or disobedient children (because such
emotions are not "uplifting".
Owls are out because some cultures associate them with
death. Mentions of birthday parties are to be avoided
because some children do not have birthday parties...
Mentions
of cakes, candy, doughnuts, french fries and coffee
should be dropped in favor of references to more
healthful foods liked cooked beans, yogurt and enriched
whole-grain breads. And of course words like
brotherhood, fraternity, heroine, snowman, swarthy,
crazy, senile...are banned because they could be
upsetting to women, to certain ethnic groups, to people
with mental disabilities, old people...
In The
Language Police, Ms Ravitch – a
historian of education at New York University...provides
an impassioned examination of how right-wing and
left-wing pressure groups have succeeded in sanitizing
textbooks and tests, how educational publishers have
conspired in this censorship, and how this development
over the last three decades is eviscerating the teaching
of literature and history.
The "bias
and sensitivity reviewers" employed by
educational publishers, she argues, "work with
assumptions that have the
inevitable effect of stripping away everything that is
potentially thought-provoking and colorful from the
texts that children encounter," and as a
result, school curriculums are being reduced to
"bland pabulum."
Why have textbook publishers
capitulated to, even embraced, bias
guidelines and language codes? Why have they caved in to
pressure groups by bowdlerizing texts, whitewashing
history and eviscerating prose?
"The short answer is
that they want to sell
textbooks...and that they must respond to the
demands of the market place. To
succeed in this highly regulated and politicised
environment, it is essential for educational publishers
not to become embroiled in controversy."
What these groups on both the
right and left have in
common, is that they all
"demand that
publishers shield children from words and ideas that
contain what they deem the 'wrong' models for living."
Both sides "believe that
reality follows language usage," that if they
"can stop people from ever seeing offensive words
and ideas, they can prevent them from having the thought
or committing the act that the words imply."
While censors on the right aim "to restore an
idealized vision of the past, an Arcadia of happy family
life" in which Father knows best, Mother takes care
of the house and kids...censors on the left believe in
"an idealized vision of the future, a utopia in
which egalitarianism prevails in all social
relations," a world in which "all nations and
all cultures are of equal accomplishment and
value."
In trying to promote such ideal worlds, censors on the
right and left often end up demanding texts that are not
realistic, as any child, exposed to
television, pop music and the daily hubbub of real life
can plainly see. When it comes
to the teaching of literature, it can reduce the
ambiguities and complexities of art into simplistic
social and political messages; it can result
in the rejection of classic texts and good writing in
favor of boring works, calculated to offend and
stimulate no one; and it can
result in the selection of works deemed
"relevant" to students, instead of works that
might broaden their outlook and introduce them to new
worlds.
At the
end of the book Ms Ravitch makes three suggestions for
stopping censorship within the educational system:
"disestablishing and deregulating the textbook
adoption process" so that teachers
rather than state officials decide what
books will be chosen and the leverage of
political pressure groups is diminished; creating
mechanisms to expose to public view what publishers, the
states and the federal government are doing with
educational material; and finding better-educated
teachers "who are masters of what they
teach."
A fourth
suggestion might be added to that list: reading The
Language Police as an introduction to the
problem, a book that is every bit alarming as it is
illuminating.
|
