Dobbs: Schools Banning Words at 'Alarming Rate'

NewsMax.com ^ | 6/24/03 | Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

[kattracks]

Political correctness has so infected the public schools that classroom textbooks are now vetted for bad words and phrases that may upset people.

Lou Dobbs reported Monday night on his CNN program that "the list of words and phrases now banned in American classrooms is rising at an alarming rate."

"You may be surprised" to find out the innocent words and phrases now being deemed inadmissible in a classroom, Dobbs said.

Dobbs' launch pad was author and education expert Diane Ravitch's new book, "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn."

Here are some examples from Ravitch's work:

• "Anchorman" is a no go. Sorry, Lou, it's sexist!

• Forget about mentioning "Adam and Eve." The PC crowd says it should be "Eve and Adam to demonstrate males do not take priority over females."

• "Abnormal. Banned as demeaning to persons with disabilities."

Ravitch says the thought police at schoolbook publishers even issue "bias guidelines" to enforce their edicts.

Textbooks have been disinfected of such words as "actress or businessman or salesman, or founding fathers or brotherhood."

Ravitch explains that banned words and phrases are removed because, as the p.c. crowd argues, "these are either sexist words or age-biased words, or someone will find them offensive."

The thought police, according to Ravitch, have also been busy "rewriting classic literature, dropping phrases and words because there were words like 'God' that weren't allowed, even though it appeared in the works of Eli Wiesel, or Isaac Bashevis Singer."

One explanation for the growing censorship in the schoolbook publishing market: four publishing companies dominate 75 percent of the market.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Media Bias

[risk]

Supreme Court ruling: libraries receiving federal funds
can be required to filter Internet content:
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20030623-114254-7179r.htm

Cuban Librarians get no Succor from the ALA:
http://www.friendsofcubanlibraries.org/

Pro-Castro librarians accused of shushing rivals:
http://www.lisnews.com/article.php3?sid=20030620183729

Banned books on display:
http://www.luc.edu/libraries/banned/

The 100 most banned books in the 1990s:
http://www.luc.edu/libraries/banned/banbook.html

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
15. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna
20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
61. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!

[poet]

All future dumbed down voters. Just like the politicians want them. America is dying a slow and agonizing death from within. If we don't take our schools back to local control,
we will have an enourmous ignorant population..

[risk]

But, but, but, we can't have the kids reading A Brave New World! They might get ideas.

[Luke Skyfreeper]

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

Bridge to Terabithia? What the heck for?

[Cachelot]

"American Psycho" and "Carrie" banned?

Pure BS. Not available in some public libraries does not mean "banned" :).

[tdadams]

I'm hard pressed to think about what's controversial in some of these 'banned' books.

Whether or not my kids read any of these books is my decision, and with the exception of only two or three obvious titles I would let my kids read any of these and be thrilled that they were reading books.

Some may contain foul language or may be un-P.C., but hopefully my kids will be mature enough to handle it.

[Fresh Wind]

All future dumbed down voters.

Recently, I had a brief conversation with a male child (is it still OK to say "boy"?), maybe 10 or 11. He had seen a book with the word "Jew" in the title. He freaked out and immediately proclaimed the book to be "racist". I pointed out to him that it could not be, because the author was a Rabbi. I got nothing from him but a blank expression which said he didn't know what a Rabbi is, and didn't need to.

So, this is the new generation.

[risk]

>>>> Bridge to Terabithia? What the heck for?

I don't know why each of these books is controversial. But a quick search about this one reveals that it's troubled in a particular location, and the issue seems to be the occult. There's a brief blurb at freedomforum.org claiming that references to witchcraft are to blame.

It makes sense that some parents wouldn't want their kids to read this book. I think that is true for almost any book, at one time or another, though. I see this issue as being part of the conundrum that is public education today. I'm sure that private schools are selective about what they acquire for their libraries.

But it also wouldn't surprise me if private schools have an even wider variety of books than many public schools do. There is no substitute for having an adult on hand to act as a moral compass for any serious young reader.

---

Bridge to Terabithia, the Newbery Award-winning book by Katherine Paterson has been challenged numerous times in Georgia school and public libraries.

[risk]

>>>> Pure BS. Not available in some public libraries does not mean "banned" :).

I agree. Still, it's interesting to see what "The Joneses" didn't want their Johnny to read.

[TomGuy]

Who are these PC language police, and how did they ever get enough power/influence to change the literature?

[SevenDaysInMay]

I am through with PC. Some might even say polite.

It is past time that we call a spade a spade and a dam'ed dirty shovel. Free speech is back, Gents and Mams.

This "...person" nonsense is the first to go.

Where I am from, men preceed women into the unknown and danger. So masculine references will preceed feminine.

I am reaching back for "negroes" next as it is a harvest of our New World's languages with Latin roots. Today, it sounds kinda sophisticated like.

I will not be niggardly in my use of our slavic or Nordic/Anglo/Saxon/Norman roots either.

Got any questions?

No, I am self-employed.

[wunderkind54]

Vouchers.

When parents can decide which school has the curricula they deem most beneficial for the proper education of their children.

Coming to a state near you soon....I hope.

[risk]

>>>> Some may contain foul language or may be un-P.C., but hopefully my kids will be mature enough to handle it. I think there's more to it than their current maturity. You're committed to answering their questions and concerns, and you probably have actually sat them down and read whole books to them, maybe even more than once. I think this is really up to each parent. I have friends who censor everything their kids read, and they homeschool. I respect that. For kids who need censorship, close one on one reading is probably also appropriate. When they're old enough to use a card catalog, parental discretion will vary. I was raised with free access to public libraries. My parents stayed close by and were ready to help me with my cognitive dissonance, and they made sure I was in a good school with teachers and librarians nearby when they weren't around. The issue here is the notion that ideas are dangerous. Of course they are. But one person's feast is another's poison.

Diane Ravitch points out in her new book The Language Police that both the left and the right put pressure on textbook publishers to "cleanup" offensive language, and the result is tripe. Here are some comments about the book and the author.

---

From http://www.aaabooksearch.com/ISBN/0375414827 Publisher Reviews (from BarnesAndNoble):

		Before Anton Chekhov and Mark Twain can be used in school readers and exams, they must be vetted by a bias and sensitivity committee. An anthology used in Tennessee schools changed By God! to By gum! and My God! to You dont mean it. The New York State Education Department omitted mentioning Jews in an Isaac Bashevis Singer story about prewar Poland, or blacks in Annie Dillards memoir of growing up in a racially mixed town. California rejected a reading book because The Little Engine That Could was male. Diane Ravitch maintains that Americas students are compelled to read insipid texts that have been censored and bowdlerized, issued by publishers who willingly cut controversial material from their booksa case of the bland leading the bland. The Language Police is the first full-scale expos of this cultural and educational scandal, written by a leading historian. It documents the existence of an elaborate and well-established protocol of beneficent censorship, quietly endorsed and implemented by test makers and textbook publishers, states, and the federal government. School boards and bias and sensitivity committees review, abridge, and modify texts to delete potentially offensive words, topics, and imagery. Publishers practice self-censorship to sell books in big states. To what exactly do the censors object? A typical publishers guideline advises that Women cannot be depicted as caregivers or doing household chores. Men cannot be lawyers or doctors or plumbers. They must be nurturing helpmates. Old people cannot be feeble or dependent; they must jog or repair the roof. A story that is set in the mountains discriminates against students from flatlands. Children cannot be shown as disobedient or in conflict with adults. Cake cannot appear in a story because it is not nutritious. The result of these revisions areno surprise!boring, inane texts about a cotton-candy world bearing no resemblance to what children can access with the click of a remote control or a computer mouse. Sadly, data show that these efforts to sanitize language do not advance learning or bolster test scores, the very reason given for banning allegedly insensitive words and topics. Ravitch offers a powerful political and economic analysis of the causes of censorship. She has practical and sensible solutions for ending it, which will improve the quality of books for students as well as liberating publishers, state boards of education, and schools from the grip of pressure groups. Passionate and polemical, The Language Police is a book for every educator, concerned parent, and engaged citizen. Diane Ravitch is a historian of education and Research Professor of Education at New York University and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. She was assistant secretary in charge of research in the U.S. Department of Education in the administration of President George H. W. Bush and was appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board by President Bill Clinton. The author of seven previous books on education, including the critically acclaimed Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.
	From The Critics
		The New York Times In The Language Police, Ms. Ravitch -- a historian of education at New York University and the author of Left Back, a 2000 book about failed school reform -- 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. — Michiku Kakutani The Los Angeles Times Lucid, forceful, written with insight, passion, compassion and conviction, The Language Police is not only hair-raisingly readable but deeply reasonable. It should be required reading not only for parents, teachers and educators, but for everyone who cares about history, literature, science, culture and indeed the civilization in which we live. — Merle Rubin The Washington Post It's difficult to exaggerate the importance of this book. Whether The Language Police will turn out to be one of those rare books that actually influence the way we live -- Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed -- remains to be seen, but surely one must pray that it does. Meticulously researched and forcefully argued, it makes appallingly plain that the textbooks American schoolchildren read and the tests that measure their academic progress have been corrupted by a bizarre de facto alliance of the far left and the far right. — Jonathan Yardley The New York Times Sunday Book Review Ravitch, finding the system and its results ''an outrage,'' passionately insists that ''the reign of censorship must end.'' Her remedies, along with better-educated teachers: Eliminate the statewide textbooks adoption process, and substitute a competitive market, with school districts choosing their own books and materials. And let the sun shine in by compelling all states and publishers to reveal their bias guidelines and by placing on the Internet all the deliberations of bias and sensitivity panels, including what they reject. ''No one asked the rest of us whether we want to live in a society in which everything objectionable to every contending party has been expunged from our reading materials,'' she notes. It's time, indeed, that we were asked. — Daniel J. Kevles

From http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/bios/ravitch.html:

Diane Ravitch

Diane Ravitch is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Koret Task Force on K–12 Education.

Ravitch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she holds the Brown Chair in Education Policy. Additionally, she is a research professor at New York University and a member of the board of the New America Foundation.

Since 1997, Ravitch has been a member of the National Assessment Governing Board. She is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, and the Society of American Historians.

During the first Bush administration, Ravitch served as an assistant secretary for educational research and improvement and as a counselor to the U.S. Department of Education. She is a former professor of history and education at Columbia University's Teachers College and a former adviser to Poland's Ministry of Education.

Ravitch is the editor of many publications, including the annual Brookings Papers on Education Policy. She edited The Schools We Deserve, Debating the Future of American Education, and The American Reader.

She has many books to her credit including The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003); Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms; National Standards in American Education: A Citizen's Guide; What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? (with Hoover senior fellow and Koret Task Force member Chester E. Finn Jr.); The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805–1973; and The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945–1980. Her publications have been translated into many languages. Her articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Brookings Review.

Ravitch, a historian of education, has lectured on democracy and civic education throughout the world. Her website is www.dianeravitch.com.

(2003)

[ontos-on]

Yes, dumbed down voters indeed.

But the more important consideration is that these generations will continuously be set upon from so many angles that are not presently exposed, in order to conform to conform to the citizen that is desired by the would be mind controllers.

A liberal education shows a person how he has been formed and provides the means to liberate himself from the conditions and presuppositions of his native environment through the examination of them. The critical examination is really a task of self-criticism, or self-knowledge, actually. This is what education is supposed to help a person achieve --for himself. This type of education is not pitched int order to meet the needs of industry, government or "society". Rather, it is addressed to the needs of the person. This is about his liberation or freedom. Such an education is a precious gift. This gift is not given by users for it tends to put the recipient beyond the use of others.

That achievement lasts forever. It is not a primer for "a job" and it is not "training". The latter are not liberating. They are intended as designs to be implanted on a blank slate in order to produce a "capability" for certain tasks. Those tasks are defined by others. The person is really left out of this kind of education except inthe forms of suppression that are felt necessary in order to achieve efficient "training".

The future will not even know what it lost, because it will not know what a liberal education was supposed to be.

Tyrants always proceed thus.

[Note: link this topic to the Gender Feminism article today by Wendy Mc_____ called Conscientious objector from the Gender War]

[risk]

>>>> All future dumbed down voters.

It's just so much liberal [explitive]. Labels divide people. We need fewer labels, not more. --George Carlin (?)

I fully agree with both of you! I don't know if this is really George Carlin, but it sure is funny: http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Vines/1521/carlin_pclanguage2.html I won't repeat it here since it's not exactly according to FR's rules :)

[Cachelot]

I agree. Still, it's interesting to see what "The Joneses" didn't want their Johnny to read.

Sigh. It probably has nothing whatsoever to do with "The Joneses" and "their Johnny".

A public library buys books with limited funds. Often the personal tastes of a librarian or group of them will matter for what is chosen. If I had been buying, I'd probably have included some of the books on your list (like Flowers for Algernon and Brave New World). I'd have dropped others, like the few homosexual activist tracts and The Handmaid's Tale which I found rather boring and stupid. And by dropping a few things I'd have money to buy other stuff, like for example "The Wasp Factory" and "Glass" by Iain Banks.

Unless you can point to some directive saying that these libraries will not get public funds unless they drop the books on your list, you have nothing here. Probably such a directive does not exist, since your list is not even consistent - these books are not missing from every public library, but are merely a collection of titles that someone has determined are often not to be found.

[risk]

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Vines/1521/carlin_pclanguage2.html

[risk]

Probably such a directive does not exist, since your list is not even consistent - these books are not missing from every public library, but are merely a collection of titles that someone has determined are often not to be found.

It's not my list, but I've seen a community divided by what should be read in just one 8th grade class. It's more than just economics and budgets. Check out Ravitch.