Rating: 
Summary: What Johnny Can't Read
Review: This is far and away the most illuminating take so far on what's behind the dumbing down of the schools and why kids don't read even if they can. Ravitch has looked into textbooks and tests and what she has found astounds and amuses. In fact, you don't know whether to laugh or cry at some of what's revealed here--but you can't stop reading. Pressure groups of right and left have shaped the subject matter and language that's permissible in what kids learn in ways that make school so boring it's no wonder they turn to TV and pop music. Among the no-no's imposed by the fundamentalist right are dinosaurs (which might lead to the subject of evolution), and fairy tales and magic (which suggest the supernatural. The PC watchdogs of the left require that no mother be shown cooking or cleaning and no father leaving for the office briefcase in hand. Mothers have to be the ones going off to work while Dad has to be shown at domestic chores. No gender stereotypes allowed, and no words like brotherhood, heroine, or senile. No one is old enough to be pictured with a cane, let alone in a wheelchair. Seniors are all spry and healthy in the never-never land of the sanitized works publishers of textbooks have produced in place of full-bodied history and imaginative literature. No one is to be offended, lest they influence the sale of these books by the mega-publishers who produce them, and to that end guidelines have been imposed that amount to censorship of everything that could possibly appear controversial to anyone--leaving only a sterile and oversimplified text, guaranteed to bore young minds rather than stretch them. Ravitch doesn't stop with what's gone wrong and how it came about--she suggests what can be done to change the textbook adoption process and in the meantime provides reading lists that will enrich children's minds at every level. This is a book that should be read by every parent and every teacher in America. It's that rare combination--an important work and a good read.
Rating:
Summary: Can DUCKSPEAK be far behind?
Review: Just get the book! It is a real expose of threatened censorship.
Rating:
Summary: A Fabulous Book and a Breath of Fresh Air!
Review: I read "The Language Police" after I heard the author interviewed on "Fresh Air" (NPR). She was balanced, fair, and very impressive. The book is a great read. It tells in a nonpolitical way how our children's textbooks and standardized tests are subject to a heavyhanded censorship. Hundreds of words and dozens of topics are routinely eliminated from textbooks and tests to avoid offending someone somewhere, be they rightwingers or leftwingers. At the end of the book are two important appendices: One is a glossary of banned words and topics (this will make you laugh out loud). The other is an exemplary reading list of classics that everyone, children and adults, will enjoy reading or re-reading.I strongly recommend this book for every parent and every teacher. It is the best book about education that I have read in many years. Ravitch is the voice of commonsense. The only groups for whom she has contempt are the censors who are messing with our children's minds. A Reader from New York City
Rating:
Summary: from an a parent
Review: It is frightening to read about what is going on in American schools. The lunacy of political correctness and censorship seems to be taking over the education of our children at a time when the world is finally recognizing the values of free speech and democracy. Professor Ravitch does a remarkable job of highlighting these trends in both a funny and tragi-comic fashion while suggesting some thoughtful ways forward for American education. A must-read for teachers and parents alike.
Rating:
Summary: Do not miss this book
Review: I highly recommend this eminently readable, balanced and scholarly history of an important subject: the bizarre and often scary world of educational censorship. Ravitch describes a world gone mad in search of fairness and avoiding bad feelings. The "sensible principle of removing racist and sexist language" has turned into an "effort to delete whatever might annoy or offend the most agitated imaginations." Ravitch relates how a story about forest animals living in a rotting tree trunk had to be eliminated from a fourth grade reading test because comparing the tree trunk to an apartment was "a negative, demeaning stereotype of apartments and people who live in them." A true story about a heroic blind man who climbed Mount McKinnley? No good for two reasons. First, "regional bias": stories about hiking favor children who live in mountainous areas. But also it is "demeaning to applaud a blind person for overcoming daunting obstacles, like climbing a steep, icy mountain trail." Why? Because that implies that being blind is a handicap to be overcome. That might hurt a blind person's feelings. Really. Bias and sensitivity guidelines routinely used by educational publishers, test development companies, the states, and scholarly and professional associations guidelines "combine left-wing political correctness and right-wing fundamentalism, a strange stew of discordant influences," explains Ravitch. As Ravitch points out, the classic Steinbeck novel, Of Mice and Men is out for two reasons: the word mice is too scary and might create a bad emotional reaction in a test taking student, and the word men is generally taboo (along with workmen, handyman, mankind, manpower, able-bodied seaman and other similar slurs). Ravitch suggests "Of Small Furry Animals and People" as a possible non offensive title for Steinbeck's classic. The Language Police also contains an important and comprehensive review of history text books, many of which laud every society but our own as advanced and civilized. The thirty-page Glossary of Banned Words, Usages and Stereotypes (including citations to the various guidelines) would be side splittingly funny if it were not so sad and scary. The b's alone contain thirty-six entries including: backward (ethnocentric - must be replaced); backwoodsman (sexist - must be replaced with pioneer); blind (offensive - replace with people who are blind); bookworm (offensive - replace with intellectual) and many other highly offensive terms. Most troubling is the resulting dumbing down of education. Ravitch explains: "The only problem was that all this activism has made the textbooks dull. Studies showed that they also had a simpler vocabulary, that they had been dumbed down at the same time they were being 'purified.' With everything that might offend anyone removed, the textbooks lacked the capacity to inspire, sadden, or intrigue their readers. Such are the wages of censorship." This book is a must read for people on the left, right, and in the center who care about education and literacy.
Rating:
Summary: Tuth Telling
Review: This book was clear and well written. Ravitch sheds light on the dumbing down of the English language. The book details countless examples of political correctness gone too far! Did you know text books are unable to portray women taking care of children or Asians who look too smart in order not to perpetuate myths?
I recommend this book to all who are interested in the education of our children.
Rating:
Summary: Liberating and accurate
Review: Once again, Prof. Ravitch has entered a territory where many fear to tread. She deftly exposes how the left and the right have equally (yes, equally) interfered with accurate learning by our nation's students by establishing censorship in textbooks. Her words eloquently capture the manipulation that textbook publishers, testing companies, and political groups have successfully implemented thus preventing our children from learning accurate historical facts and/or reading classic literary works. Prof. Ravitch describes the detective work she engaged in to find out how the "language police" started and how they are becoming ubiquitous in the educational environments. She then bravely blames them (using the term "bowdlerization") for dumbing down education in this country by creating a "bland pabulum". Some chapters begin with a quote from George Orwell's "1984" and we are left to wonder how prophetic Mr. Orwell was. The language in this book is incisive and Ms. Ravitch shows no intention of concealing any of the damage done by the "language police". In fact, this may be one of her most enlightening works yet. By displaying who the culprits are, she leaves it to us to take some action and get rid of the censhorship interfering with the learning process in young American citizens during times where entertainment and the internet seem to be the ones doing the actual teaching. In her book Prof. Ravitch shows how our students are no longer reading Shakespeare,Hawthorne or Austen but instead read some obscure authors like Sandra Cisneros, Naomi Shihab Nye and other writers from minority groups. Go figure, that must be real enlightment... The book ends with a quote from John Adams: "...Let every juice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing." I guess not many pressure groups have read John Adams either and may remain unaffected by this quote. The book contains an appendix of banned words, stereotypes, and topics. Also, there is a second appendix listing classic literature for home and school for those interested in defeating the language police with knowledge and a broad exposure to a real world.
Rating:
Summary: Language Police
Review: This book is full of facts (frankly, amazing facts) that clearly show censorship is alive and well in the world of textbook printing and it's affecting our children and their world view. The censors in this case are the intellectual elite, who feel that our children need their censorship to learn in an unbiased manner. The problem is that, in their goal of shaping society, they ignore reality. Many of us would prefer our children to have the facts, as unattractive as they might be in some cases.
Ravitch's book is measured, non-emotional, and full of facts so no matter what your political point of view, you can examine this issue fully youself.
Rating:
Summary: Common Sense reader
Review: This book shows how both sides play into the learning process. Very interesting story which did not surprise me in the least. Today's students are being deprived of the real world and everything is "dumbed-down" and it is having a direct effect on the impresionable youth of today. Anyone who believes this novel is written for the "Limbaugh-esque" should have their head examined. Sometimes the truth hurts.
Rating: 
Summary: Valuable and True.
Review: The desire of textbook makers and assessment companies to never challenge a student's preexisting sensibilities is very much the reason that Diane Ravitch wrote her new book, The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn.
Dr. Ravitch is a former member of the first Bush administration's Department of Education. She is currently a professor at New York University . Despite her past political affiliations, I'd like to firmly state that this is not a "conservative" book. The author painstakingly documented that censorship, or pressure, upon textbook manufacturers comes from both the right and the left. Indeed, she has separate chapters devoted to analyzing censorship from both sides of the political spectrum. This book is not in any way a polemic. It is instead a professional, objective account of what has happened to the educational resources industry within the United States .
This is a fine work of scholarship, as Dr. Ravitch relies on primary source materials as a means of bolstering her conclusions about the current milquetoast world of instructional decision making. She personally examines the textbooks, diagnostic devices, and publishing house guidelines of the companies she investigates. The results will be particularly disturbing to the layman who has little knowledge of the workings of educrats and educationese.
I recommend this work to the reader, as it is a fountain of rare and useful information, but I would like to mention that, at least to this reviewer, it was far from a page turner. It principally deals with dry subject matter. In fact, you might say that it is the vocation of publishing and assessment companies to be as bland in their creation of products as is humanly possible.
The truly "laugh out loud" portion of The Language Police can be found in her "Glossary of Banned Words." I recommend reading this first as you'll have conversation for the rest of the week. None of the words that you'd think would be in there are present (they must be too obvious). We see that "abnormal" is verboten due to it demeaning those with disabilities. This would seem to negate a semester long graduate course I once took called "Abnormal Psychology." I should not be surprised if the class is now called "Variations of Normal Psychology." Alas, I spoke too soon, as "normal," the antonym of abnormal, has been banned as well. Further, you now cannot use the term "American" to describe citizens of the United States (I'm not kidding), as it discriminates against those from Canada and Mexico who are also part of the greater "American" landmass. More moronically, you can't put into print the words "beast, fanatic, fat, jungle, lunatic, maid, special, strange, yacht" and "costume" as some bureaucrat behind an AV machine must quiver at their pronunciation as well.
The dear educational publishers and their word enemy list offer an answer to the eternal question of whether one is a man or mouse. It has now been decisively answered that they are the latter, as the merchandisers appear to be sincerely frightened of rodents in general. Dr. Ravitch elaborates, "It is hard to imagine that a fourth-grade student would be paralyzed by dread by reading a story that included descriptions of mice. Clearly forbidden by such a prohibition is any excerpt from books like E.B. White's Stuart Little or Robert Lawson's Ben and Me."
| 
