indexing
Posted on 06/28/2002 6:06:25 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
It's been a disappointing spring for those optimists who hoped political correctness in American classrooms was finally on the decline. A series of recent reports have campus PC denizens moving beyond their usual tactics - social pressure and grade manipulation - to fashion outright bans on "objectionable" speech. Whatever happened to the spirit of free inquiry?
Most recently, the New York State Education Department was discovered to have been sanitizing the prose of famous authors - without permission - for use in standardized tests. All references to race, religion, politics, gender, sex, and even alcohol were omitted from well-known literary passages, many of which dated from the 19th or early 20th centuries.
Unsurprisingly, many passages were butchered of meaning, and certainly flavor, in the process. Students were then asked to write interpretive essays about passages devoid of the grit that made them influential to begin with.
And New York's rationale for its editing? They didn't want to make any of the students "uncomfortable." Apparently, we now educate students in sanitized intellectual bubbles, as if they have an autoimmune deficiency of the mind, and may die if exposed to a controversial thought.
Fortunately, the intellectual left made an increasingly rare ride to the rescue of free speech. University professors soundly criticized New York's editing policy, which was then discontinued. They must have thought their work would be next.
Even more disturbing than such PC historical revisionism is repression of student speech in the classroom.
This spring a UC Berkley professor published a description of a class he will teach this coming fall: "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance." The reading list proved the class would be biased, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was the last line of the description, which read "Conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections."
Still worse, a Women's Studies professor at the University of South Carolina reportedly required all spring seminar students to adhere to her "Guidelines for Classroom Discussion" as a condition of class participation, which counts toward a grade in the course. The Guidelines require all students to agree in advance that, "racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and other institutionalized forms of oppression exist," and that "we are all systemically taught misinformation about our own group and about members of
other groups." Students who do not agree with the Guidelines are prohibited from voicing alternative opinions in class.
Wouldn't it be even easier to smother challenging classroom discussion by preventing people who are likely to disagree from enrolling in a course in the first place? A professor teaching Navajo History at Arizona State University apparently thought so.
The course catalogue states, "class enrollment is limited to Native Americans." Only Native Americans can take this class? Fortunately, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education effectively pressured ASU, which has promised to eliminate the restriction from this fall's course catalogue.
While the above examples occurred at the high school and university levels, enforcers of political correctness don't limit their reach to rebellious teenagers. According to the Rutherford Institute, a Michigan elementary school teacher was reprimanded this spring for teaching her class songs that include the words "freedom" and "liberty." The school thought these words might be offensive to non-citizens.
Apparently it is no longer PC to mention freedom and liberty to immigrants in American public schools. We used to think that was why their families came here in the first place.
Advocates of free speech should be deeply concerned that such tactics are being tried in American classrooms. Political correctness is running roughshod over the type of challenging intellectual discourse that results in a quality education-and it does seem to be abating. Once again, the most sanctimonious arm of the new left proves that, while it appreciates some types of diversity, diversity of viewpoint is not its goal.
(Marie Gryphon is a policy analyst with the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom.)
I would have qualified for this class, then. But my four easter European Jewish grandparents wouldn't have.
Wish I was a college student again so I could sign up for the course just to make an issue of this. This teacher should have used the more correct phrase "Aboriginal Americans."
Of course, for the moment I'm ignoring the larger and more disgusting issue of having class participation limited by ethnic group.
How about a course called "Democracy in America -- (Minorities need not apply, since they will be consistently outvoted anyway)."
I would have qualified for this class, then. But my four easter European Jewish grandparents wouldn't have.
Wish I was a college student again so I could sign up for the course just to make an issue of this. This teacher should have used the more correct phrase "Aboriginal Americans."
Of course, for the moment I'm ignoring the larger and more disgusting issue of having class participation limited by ethnic group.
How about a course called "Democracy in America -- (Minorities need not apply, since they will be consistently outvoted anyway)."
I saw this go on all the time at a college I attended. So called "free speech" advocates would attempt to strike text from the founding fathers out of an attempt to acheive a revisionist view of history.
Most recently, the New York State Education Department was discovered to have been sanitizing the prose of famous authors - without permission - for use in standardized tests.
Newspeak dictionary, 2002 edition. (10th revised edition of course)
indexing
All in all, a good article. But the last paragraph displays a sort of naivete'. The Left's premotion of "diversity" is purely as a ploy to break down the ethnic and cultural identity of the mainstream American. It is part of the compulsive pursuit of an undifferentiated humanity--it is never based upon true mutual respect between diverse peoples, each proud of their own heritage. That would be diversity to normal people, but that is not what is involved. (See Destroying Cultural Continuity and The Battle Over Patterns Of Personal Identification.)
William Flax
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
