The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn By texasbeerguide.com
I first heard Prof. Ravitch interviewed on Fresh Air with Terry Gross on NPR. Another reader heard about it on Savage Nation. If the book is highlighted on both a left wing and right wing radio show, what does that tell you about the even handedness with which Ms. Ravitch approaches the subject? As an independent, I found the balance to be refreshing.
Disregard claims that she falls back on left bashing. Though she definitely makes light of some of the extreme examples of the feminist and multiculturalist activism, she gives the religious fundamentalists a taste of the same medicine. She even highlights examples of right wing censorship with her own experiences working in her high school library in Houston during the McCarthy era, and points out the problems that she had as the child of Yellow Dog Democrats in that environment. In fact, Ms. Ravitch was an appointee of both the first Bush and the Clinton Administrations. It is hard to believe that the reviewers accusing her of bias have read the book, though it could be that they are so biased that their view is distorted.
Some seem to believe that she just doesn't understand the value of Social Content codes, or that the codes don't mandate the excesses which she illustrates. I think they misunderstand her, or have not read the book carefully and open mindedly enough. Sure, we must be sensitive of other cultures, but not to the point that we decide not to read Huckleberry Finn because Twain uses the n word. Although bans of this book should be examples of extremism, they have been so common in our country that censorship of this book is almost mainstream. As anyone who has actually read the story knows, Twain ironically shows Jim to be the only rational, honest, intelligent, and sane man on the whole trip, all the while people hypocritically treat him as subhuman. Sure, we must have equal treatment of women and minorities, but students should know that was not so in the past. Her point is that modern textbooks are not only avoiding intelligent discussion of such problems, but in some cases are flatly trading off truth (lying) in the name of balance and political correctness, and the reason is the unintended consequences of those Social Content codes. The codes may not mandate the sillines explicitly, but the extremist, litigious groups that follow these issues demand extreme interpretations of those codes, with hilarious results.
Consider one effect of the Social Content codes: everything prior to about 1970 does not contain the balance sought. Therefore, all literature produced prior to 1970 is eliminated, whether it be Shakespeare, Twain, Dickens, or any number of other outstanding writers. Heck, even Upton Sinclair portrayed women as domestic and men as strong and active. Actually, it's worse than that, since many of the loudest groups demand that not only do the subjects have to be balanced, but the authors have to be as well. They claim that only black authors can write about black subjects, Asians about Asians, etc. I guess they have never heard of Alex Kotlowitz or Joseph Conrad but of course they haven't, because each of those authors portrayed minorities in roles other than upper middle class, and so would be banned. If you narrow the population of allowable authors on grounds other than merit, you reduce the probability that you will get good literature. What does that leave for children to read? Bad literature produced by hack writers.
The other side of the coin is that the Religious Right demands avoidance of controversial subjects. Great literature examines controversial subjects. Therefore, all great literature is banned. We are left, again, with pap and pablum.
As Milton Friedman has pointed out, one of the worst trends in education has been the consolidation of school districts. He cites the number that existed when he was a child, and notes that the number has fallen by orders of magnitude as districts consolidate. Eventually, we will have 50 state districts, then 1 federal district. When you have many districts, you have many laboratories. Each is better able to tailor the curriculum to the local tastes and culture, and the result is a vibrant and multicultural American culture the Melting Pot. When you have few districts, you have less innovation. When you have to mollify millions rather than dozens of parents, you must strive to offend the least common denominator, so you must blandify the content of the curriculum to a thin gruel.
Which brings me to another minor point that Ravitch points out. If you have a thin, bland, boring curriculum presented at school, and that competes with the loud, colorful culture of MTV, Mickey D, and the local mall, which do you think will reverberate with kids? Which is influential? Try as you might to brainwash kids into thinking that girls and boys, old and young, abled and disabled are interchangeable (the Left), or that everything in the past was good, the government and parents should not be questioned, and Christianity is the only religion (the Right), they are going to learn that these notions are false. Wouldn't it be better to teach them the truth and deal with it directly and therefore retain their respect, then to teach them a lie, ignore the consequences as they grapple with it on their own, and watch as they develop a strong cynicism with regard to schools, parents, and social institutions? English Ultimately I enjoyed this book but for different reasons that I had perhaps anticipated.
Assuming that this would be a wide and far reaching exposition of censorship and its impact on society at large, I duly purchased this text, only to find it far from met those aims and objectives. Instead what I found was an articulate (if somewhat repetitive) diatribe pertaining solely to the very narrow concern of k 12 textbook procurement for the American school system, or rather that procurement system.
That textbooks are censored is not new, that content is reviewed and edited is not new, that pressure groups push to have their vested interests served (and those of other's excluded) is not revelationary, that language has (thankfully) been kicked into shape regarding overt racist and sexist language simply reflects the shift in what society has elected as being its current set of values. So what's new? Not much really, certainly not much that the average articulate citizen has not guessed at for themselves.
The major flaws in this text are as follows:
i) As the title alludes to, this is an historian's take on an issue which is really outside of her remit, and this quite often shines through,
ii) Dr. Ravitch seems to have forgotten she is seventy three years old and that children and young adults don't learn like either she does or did, that their pedagogical narrative is a totally different educational paradigm to hers, so why isn't she aware of this elementary fact? She seems totally unaware that whilst she may hate textbooks full of graphics (she constantly harps on about this fact), that textbooks like that are NOT AIIMED AT SEVENTY THREE YEAR OLD PEOPLE! They are squarely aimed at young people who are highly visually literate and require very different kinds of stimuli than was the case when she attended school in the post war world. Why she keeps revealing her acute ignorance of current pedagogical paradigms is anyone's guess.
Ultimately this book is a worthwhile read for it offers a cohesive voice in the wider censorship debate, a debate which should be engaged in at everyone's dinner table, irrelevant of which side of the fence they sit on. That it was myopic in parts, repetitive in others, and that it could easily have been half as long is something her editors should have considered. English Diane Ravitch is a historian who worked in the U.S. Department of Education during the George H. W. Bush administration and was appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board by Bill Clinton. In this book she expresses her concerns about censorship of materials used in public school instruction and educational testing. This censorship began with reasonable concerns that female and ethnic minority students not encounter offensive educational material. It has evolved into a surprisingly broad and increasingly bizarre policy of censorship that has gone far beyond its original scope and now excises from test and textbooks words, images, passages and ideas that no reasonable person would consider biased.
The book examines the original meaning of bias in educational materials and how that meaning has evolved in response to pressures from both ends of the political spectrum. The author's approach is noteworthy because of its even handed treatment of conservatives and liberals. She shows how groups on the right and the left demand that test and textbook publishers to exclude controversial content from their products. Adoption procedures in the two largest textbook markets California and Texas constrain what is available in other states. Conducting sensitivity reviews and avoiding negative publicity, publishers produce materials that are simplistic, avoid controversy, and distort cultural and historical facts.
Ravitch warns that these boring textbooks in our schools are having serious effects beyond discouraged teachers and disinterested students. Learning becomes increasingly disconnected from the world students see online, in the media, and around them. Great literature disappears from reading lists because it contains blacklisted words, competing points of view, or an unrepresentative balance of ethnic and racial groups. Students' ability to study history with a critical eye, learning why some cultures thrive and others collapse, is diminished as they absorb text after text cleansed of any evaluative judgments. Great history consists of great stories, surprising convergences, the conflict of powerful ideas, and the historian's insights into motivation and character that illuminate the life of a man or woman but all of that has been sacrificed to the gods of coverage and cultural equivalence.
How do we fix these problems? There are three general strategies. First, we must take steps to restore competition to the textbook market. Individual schools need to have unconstrained access to a wider variety of textbooks from a larger number of publishers. Second, we need sunshine. The public needs to be made aware of censorship by publishers, states, and the federal government. Third, we need better educated public school teachers. They should have stronger credentials in the subjects they teach, preparing them to effectively evaluate educational materials and supplement or replace them if needed.
I recommend reading this book and some of the sources it draws upon. It identifies an important problem in public education, describes it in useful detail, and recommends strategies to mitigate its effects. English This excellent (and depressing) study brings to light a serious problem in American education, some signs of which are becoming visible in the UK. All educators should be aware of Ravitch's findings, painstakingly assembled over several years. Of value too is her comprehensive list of literary texts that should be on the curriculum for each age group. It's also one of the best introductions to political correctness. English This is a compelling read about the effect of lobby groups on US publishers of educational text books. The right wing (fundamentalist Christian) lobbies for change in content, while the politically correct left lobbies for change in language. The result is English test papers that are specially written to placate all parties and which do not cannot draw on the classics of American literature. The dumbing down of language and falsification of history described here are hair raising. Not all the changes are unreasonable, but enough are so absurd as to be dangerous. There should be a public debate on the issues raised, and an investigation into the 'guidelines' used by UK publishers. English
If youre an actress or a coed just trying to do a man size job, a yes man who turns a deaf ear to some sob sister, an heiress aboard her yacht, or a bookworm enjoying a boys night out, Diane Ravitchs internationally acclaimed The Language Police has bad news for you: Erase those words from your vocabulary!
Textbook publishers and state education agencies have sought to root out racist, sexist, and elitist language in classroom and library materials. But according to Diane Ravitch, a leading historian of education, what began with the best of intentions has veered toward bizarre extremes. At a time when we celebrate and encourage diversity, young readers are fed bowdlerized texts, devoid of the references that give these works their meaning and vitality. With forceful arguments and sensible solutions for rescuing American education from the pressure groups that have made classrooms bland and uninspiring, The Language Police offers a powerful corrective to a cultural scandal. The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn