The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn

Rating:
Summary: A Necessary Book
Review: Does a terrific job of highlighting a previously little-known problem in education. Personally, I am outraged that many classic pieces of literature are now being denounced by both the left and the right for ridiculous reasons. An excellent read, I recommend.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating but Flawed
Review: The Language Police" is an fascinating overview of the censorship imposed on school textbooks by both left and right wing groups. Diane Ravitch provides some shocking (and hilarious) examples of the text book bias guidelines that result from political pressures. The extent to which high school textbooks are "dumbed down" by this process is a revelation.

My problems with this book occur in Diane Ravitch's chapter surveying state guidelines for the teaching of literature. She is dismayed that specific reading lists are missing from most state's guidelines. Only a handful of states provide these lists of authors and books that provide a "cultural heritage" for our children. At one point she asserts that she does not wish to produce a "Canon" of required texts, but what else is the list of suggested literary texts that she appends to the end of her book? Her language in this chapter is peppered with references to literary "giants" and "classic" literature. Diane Ravitch seems to feel that there is after all only one canon of great literature and it is rather a shame that it is commingled with more ephemeral works in school textbooks and literary selections.

Surely the cultural diversity in the United States is a reason not to harp on a single set of (white, male) authors that provides a rather narrow cultural overview. You don't have to agree with the political extremists who shaped the textbook bias guidelines to acknowledge that there should be flexibility and sensitivity to demographic and cultural diversity in our schools. Not everyone needs to read "Moby Dick" to become a literate and well educated member of society.

The cultural bias displayed in this chapter is disappointing considering Diane Ravitch's political even-handedness in her earlier chapters.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Reveiw of a Long Ranch Problem
Review: This book has CLEARLY shown the serious and unbelievable problem we are facing with our children's education.
I cannot beleive what is happening in our school systems...What are we creating by letting the FEW dictate to the MANY. We must pay attention and make our voices heard.

Rating:
Summary: Language Police
Review: Diane Ravitch has written a very important book! As a mother of 4, I am aghast at what I have been seeing in public education. Muting and distorting reality and history, not to mention the removal of heroes, is a recipe for a death of a nation. One of the wonderful things about life is its diversity and finding out why and how certain events have happened when studying history. Every parent with a child in public education needs this book!

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Analysis of a Serious Educational Problem
Review: In this book Diane Ravitch shows how various pressure groups (right and left wing) have attempted to limit what children can read. Ravitch shows that in their quest for ideological influence in the schools, these groups have often managed to remove any potentially controversial (and potentially interesting) information from many school books.

Ravitch argues that such censorship is deeply harmful to public education because it makes learning boring for children, as all the interesting (and controversial stuff) is removed from the classroom.

This is an excellent book , although I wish Ravitch gave more attention to solving the censorship problem. However, she does an excellent job showing how it has come to be

Rating:
Summary: Raises some interesting and important points, but polemical
Review: Ravitch raises a number of interesting topics in her essay, particularly the self-censorship that is engaged in by a textbook industry primarily interested in getting its $4 billion in profits (nationwide). Publishers want to avoid controversy at any cost and sell books, and who can blame them for catering to interest groups (both from the Right and the Left... Ravitch doesn't exculpate anyone) when they raise a stink over particular words, phrases, and topics?

However, there are a few problems with the text. Ravitch gets the blood of her reader boiling by highlighting a number of (rightfully ridiculous) examples of cases where review panels have rejected material (primarily test questions). Who can't help but get mad at her example of stories about owls being rejected because they are taboo to Navaho, or a story about a blind mountain climber being rejected because it both portrays the blind as "hindered" and biased against people living in flatlands to boot? But by painting all social content reviews with her brush of ridiculousness Ravitch fails to point out the real and very valid purpose such reviews fill. In California, for instance, the State Board has adopted Social Content regulations that reflect the Education Code in demanding fair treatment and balanced portrayals of minorities, genders, banning advertising, etc. Nothing in these guidelines mandates the silly excesses that Ravitch cites in her book.

Also, Ravitch's solution, abolishing textbook adoptions, is lamentably simplistic. It's nice to believe that the local teacher always knows what's best (in an ideal world, every teacher would be well-trained, dedicated, and socially aware), but in the absence of any broader review, you'd also get a lot of stuff that was inappropriate or just plain bad.

Let's fix the blatantly stupid excesses that Ravitch addresses. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater either.

Rating:
Summary: Censorship and politial correctness are everywhere
Review: THE LANGUAGE POLICE is a good read and a fascinating read recommended to anyone who is interested in the "censorship" of style and content of the politically correct be they of special interest groups of the left or right. With the LANGUAGE POLICE, Diane Ravitch may have struck a powerful blow for education, common sense and freedom of expression in America a cherished first amendment right which could be eroded and undone word by word by unelected "committees" of political correctness.

The range of research and quotations is impressive covering a wide swath of famous authors present and past whose works have been banned or quietly bowdlerized or edited by testing companies and publishers without comment. Ravitch quotes an indignant Ray Bradbury who became aware of bowdlerized versions of his book Fahrenheit 451.I like the lists of censored books and the CENSORSHIP on the LEFT chapter particularly the quote on Mark Twain. Ravitch never wrote anything truer: "...Teachers and students alike must learn to grapple with this novel WHICH THEY CANNOT DO UNLESS THEY READ IT." Ravitch quotes Orwell " Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?" Has it every occurred to anyone that insipid dumbed down texts play a role in school house boredom and low achievement? Ravitch's well-researched APPENDIX of BANNED WORDS and PHRASES was great (but chilling). "Sportsmanship" and "lumberjack" are out -VERBOTEN- in favor of the gender neutral and extremely weak and uncommunicative "SPORTING CONDUCT" and "WOOD-CUTTER". As a language teacher I am concerned when words that are to found in HUNDREDS of classic literary tales and thousands if not millions of English-language books are not taught thus handicapping a generation of readers who will simply lack the vocabulary to read independently. If you think about on it, it just makes no sense and hurts the education of kids.
At the end of the book the sampler of classic literature compiled with Rodney Atkinson a well-respected teacher specialist in children's literature- was very well done not just another bloomin' list but commentaries to help remind us of the book or poem we may have forgotten or encourage us to read it or suggest others read these classics of cultural literacy a la E.D. Hirsch.

The bottom line is the LANGUAGE POLICE by DIANE RAVITCH is a good read, entertaining, informative, and worthy as a reference and a guide for the citizen, the reformer, parents and educators alike. Censored books mean bad books that suppress the truth. Untruthful, garbled text books make for bad scholars and bad teachers. Why should anyone care? Bored and low-achieving students could affect the survival and success of American democracy as well as our political and economic stability.

Rating:
Summary: The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn
Review: (Special interest groups) are sucking the life out of the heart of America and Diane Ravitch explains what is happening and why. I really enjoyed (reading this book), although what it revealed tended to me.

Rating:
Summary: tracking a decline
Review: I normally review a book when its style and content both warrant comment for being of a high level of research and / or originality. I can't say that both criteria are met as successfully as I expected they would be in "Language Police" but what did impress me in a very favourable way was the author's conviction that the problem of contemporary USA-Newspeak deserves such attention. I am especially proud that another academic has taken the challenge to risk the "chopping block" over this. The book is informative in the scope of its examples, it provides ample discussion material for freshman university classes such as I teach as well as for the lay-critic. I hope that this book will stir other teachers to action and to incorporating sections of "Language Police" in their classes. This is where the real discussion lies: in a critical examination of how uninformed, racist political agendas (both left and right) are killing our literacy.

Rating:
Summary: It's even worse than you thought
Review: If you have been puzzled about why your children are being taught a much different version of history from what you learned, this book is for you. If you know enough about history to recognize that the current textbook version has bent, folded, and mutilated inconvenient facts to portray a world that never existed, this book is for you. If you believe that the United States has been a force for good in the world, the history of which is a continuous record of incremental righting of wrongs and improvement of the lot of minorities and women, then this book is for you.

However, if you believe that history should be rewritten to reflect current politically correct modalities, that children should be shielded from the fact that gross discrimination once existed, and that no one should ever be made the least bit uncomfortable by any language usage, then do not buy this book, unless you want you want your blood pressure raised and your mind expanded.

Ms. Ravitch has performed a public service by exposing to the clear light of day the process by which our children's textbooks are prepared. The book publishers, who are basically purveyors of ink and paper who only want to keep their content preparation and sales expenses as low as possible are happy to cede editorial control to pressure groups on the right and left that are reducing content to the lowest possible denominator. Reading her meticulously compiled accounts of the "bias and sensitivity" policies that have homogenized textbooks is a real eye-opener. Why, for example, is "jungle" a proscribed word? Why can't standard test questions mention owls, dinosaurs, mountains, or the seashore?

At root is a postmodern mentality that believes that confidence and self-esteem can only be instilled by examples from ones own ethnic group. To these thought police my own experiences of being inspired by Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and Sitting Bull (sorry, I mean Tatanka Iyotake) are simply incomprehensible. People must be judged not in the context of their time, but by today's PC standards. One wonders why they don't attack Isaac Newton because he did not invent the light bulb.

Fortunately, according to Ms. Ravitch, there may be a way out. She concludes the book with a three-step program for taking control back from the fringe elements. First, eliminate statewide selection of textbooks. Let local teachers and school boards select according to their perceived needs. Second, open the textbook selection process to public review. Require states to make the entire process transparent and documented on the internet. Third, make sure teachers are actually trained in the subjects they teach, as opposed to general education, so that they will have the knowledge needed to provide perspective.

This is an excellent book that should be read by every concerned parent. Thank you, Diane Ravitch!