The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn

Read the book that foretold it all: The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America: A Chronological Paper Trail Author : Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt

Diane Ravitch's new book, The Language Police

The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn

Anyone interested in the subject of over-the-top political correctness who hasn't read Diane Ravitch's new book, The Language Police, should if he or she harbors any doubts about the pervasiveness of this nefarious trend.

An earlier item here cited an excerpt from the book in the Atlantic Monthly some time back, but the full text cites many more examples. They are as numerous as they are spine-tingling.

Among them:

An inspirational story of a blind man who climbed Mt. Everest was rejected by a bias review committee because it implies that blind people have a disability and are somehow limited by that disability.

A story from an anthology edited by William Bennett was rejected simply because the politics of the editor might distress fourth-graders.

A biography of the man who designed Mt. Rushmore was rejected because mention of the monument in the Black Hills of South Dakota might offend Native Americans.

An essay about the plethora of life in a rotting stump in a forest was rejected because it compared the stump to an apartment building and that might make people who live in apartments or public housing feel bad.

A story about a dolphin that guides ships through a treacherous channel was rejected because it shows bias toward people who live by the sea. Those who don’t live by the sea might be at a disadvantage, you see.

A passage about owls was rejected because owls are considered taboo by Navajos. A publisher decreed that owls should disappear from all texts and tests, so American schoolkids are now unlikely to ever read about them.

And that’s just the first chapter.

It's hard to keep up with the stupidity of the left-wing radical extremists!

The following stories are just a FEW MORE of similar but unique articles published this year:

1 posted on 05/08/2003 9:51:59 PM PDT by steplock

"Those who don't live by the sea might be at a disadvantage." -- Of course they're at a disadvantage. Anyone knows that.

2 posted on 05/08/2003 9:55:43 PM PDT by henderson field

Bump and bookmark

I mean if it doesn't offend anyone, because I surely wouldn't want to violate any persons constitutional right not to be offended.

3 posted on 05/08/2003 10:29:43 PM PDT by Valin (Age and deceit beat youth and skill)

Back in 1994, I was asked to write an article for a textbook on the Rosenberg spy case. My sources included Ronald Radosh's book The Rosenberg File--which remains the definitive book on the case--as well as the recently-published memoirs of Soviet spy chief Pavel Sudoplatov and The FBI-KGB War, the memoirs of FBI agent Richard Lamphere, which revealed the "Venona" operation in which the FBI monitored and decrypted Soviet diplomatic traffic. I concluded in my article that the Rosenbergs were, indeed, guilty as charged, and that they were probably part of a Soviet spy ring that operated into the 1960's.

I was paid for my article, but when the textbook series was published, I noticed that the article on the Rosenberg case was vastly different from the one I wrote. The published article portrayed the Rosenbergs as victims of "McCarthyism" and cited Communist publications as evidence.

Shortly after the textbook series was published, the government released the Venona transcripts, which showed that the Rosenbergs almost certainly were spying for the Soviets.

4 posted on 05/08/2003 11:27:14 PM PDT by Taft in '52

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